14 Gill Marchbank, Managing Director of Remaldi, tells us about the company’s evolution to its current fashion-led, wearable positioning Wearable fashion When did you start up and why? Our parent company, Opticaid UK, has been designing and supplying eyewear for more than 35 years. The business was founded following changes to the Opticians Act in 1989, which opened up the market for nonopticians to sell ready-made reading glasses. Around 15 years ago, we developed Remaldi® as our contemporary brand, responding to demand for modern, quality design-led reading glasses within the gift sector. The brand has recently undergone a refresh to strengthen its fashion led yet wearable positioning. What prompted you to launch the business? The opportunity was first recognised by my father-in-law, Roger Marchbank. I joined the business 19 years ago, and, together with our team, developed the idea that reading glasses can be more than purely functional. We saw a clear gap for well designed, accessible eyewear suited to gift and lifestyle retail. With retail prices typically around £15 to £17 and strong repeat purchase behaviour, the category performs well as both an everyday essential and an impulse buy. What challenges have you overcome since the company’s launch? There have been lots of challenges! Adapting to changing retail conditions has been a constant, from Brexit and the pandemic to ongoing supply chain pressures and fluctuations in demand, all requiring us to remain flexible as a business. At the same time, we continue to track optical and colour trends, carefully editing and curating them for our customer. We’ve also adapted to shifts in buying behaviour, with the growth of online platforms and fewer, but highly valuable, trade shows. Tell us about your product offering. Remaldi® offers a curated range of reading glasses, sunglasses, sun reading glasses and eyewear accessories. The collections are fashion led but wearable, with carefully edited shapes and colours designed to suit a broad customer base. A significant number of our frames are made using bio acetate or recycled materials such as RPCTG and RPC, repurposing plastics from bottles and food containers and helping to reduce landfill. We also provide display ready solutions to support effective in-store merchandising. What are your most popular products? Our Remaldi® reading glasses remain the core of the range, particularly fashion-led styles that balance contemporary design with everyday wearability. Sunglasses and sun readers are also strong performers, offering accessible, design led options for seasonal and year-round use. More recently, our Eyefold slim wrap glasses cases have been a standout success, combining practicality with a stylish, space saving design that works well within the gifting environment. Have any products taken you by surprise with their popularity? Products that solve everyday problems tend to perform particularly well. Our RFID blocking card wallets, with a modern matt finish and eye-catching prints, have been a strong addition to the range (although nothing to do with eyewear!). Functional eyewear such as over glasses and the Angling Eyes bifocal fishing glasses also perform strongly. Over glasses provide a cost effective way to convert prescription glasses into sunglasses or night driving glasses, reducing glare and improving clarity, making them highly practical and easy to buy. As the name suggests you pop them on over your glasses! How do you keep your designs fresh and current? Do you follow trends? Yes – we closely monitor fashion, colour and optical trends, but always filter them through wearability. Our approach is to carefully edit and curate trends into styles that feel current but remain easy for customers to wear every day. We also regularly review sales data by style, colour and strength, giving us a clear understanding of what works for our customer base and helping to guide future ranges. What sets you apart from your competitors? As an independent business, we stay close to our stockists and understand what works in store. Our focus is on creating well-designed, accessible products that combine style, functionality and strong retail performance.
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