A Visionary Approach to Business with Dame Mary Perkins, co-founder of Specsavers

Conversations of Inspiration

Holly Tucker MBE

Education, Business, Society & Culture, Self-improvement, Entrepreneurship, Personal Journals

5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 4 October 2021

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week Holly speaks with Dame Mary Perkins, co-founder of one of the nation’s most beloved brands, Specsavers.

Having always been one to challenge stereotypes, Dame Mary built her business not from the kitchen table, but on a table tennis table in her spare room and has continued to excel throughout her career ever since.

Seizing an opportunity to revolutionise the industry in the 1980’s, Dame Mary focused on offering an exceptional customer experience by encouraging her workforce to treat every customer like their ‘best friend’ - a value that still drives the business today, nearly 40 years later.

Dame Mary stands apart as one of the most successful women of our time and her passion for championing others makes it easy to see why Specsavers has become such a remarkable and enduring brand that has weathered recessions, the rise of the digital world and now a global pandemic.

Enjoying listening to these unfiltered chats? It's worth following Holly Tucker MBE and Holly & Co on Instagram, and subscribing to our weekly newsletter on our website, where Holly downloads her thoughts, and exclusively shares small business finds and topical, 'ungoogleable' business advice.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Today, I had the total honour of speaking to Dave Mary Perkins, the co-founder of Spek Savers.
0:06.7	Dave Mary is very kind, generous and gloriously down to earth, and she's worked so hard
0:13.6	to put customers at the very heart of her brand. 2,700 stores across the UK, Ireland, Norway, Sweden,
0:22.4	Denmark, Finland, Spain, Australia and New Zealand. Spek Savers is a global brand,
0:29.3	and so I just couldn't wait to hit all about the ethos and how she retains the company's culture,
0:36.6	I suppose. You know, as it grows and where this incredible story began, she's aged 77,
0:43.4	and Dave Mary still remains very much part of the business, and her passion, drive,
0:49.8	championship of New Talent is just brighter than ever. She's a pioneering woman,
0:56.1	and it's women like Dave Mary who have paved the way for us all, so sit back and enjoy.
1:11.7	I'm Holly Tucker, and welcome to Conversations of Inspiration. Back in 2006, I founded not on the
1:18.8	high street from my kitchen table, and since then I've gone on to launch Holly and Co.
1:24.4	I'm the UK ambassador of creative small businesses, and I believe that having a business
1:29.7	doing what you love is the key to a happy fulfilled life. My dream is to help everybody start theirs.
1:37.0	I'm here to offer advice, inspiration, wisdom and encouragement, and in my view,
1:43.2	the best way to do this is by sharing stories. So I've reached out to my favourite small businesses,
1:50.2	entrepreneurs, and those who simply inspire me and ask them to share theirs.
1:56.0	With thanks to Dell Technologies, who've helped bring this free podcast to life.
2:01.2	Here are my Conversations of Inspiration.
2:05.2	Hello Mary, what an absolute pleasure and honour it is to be speaking to you today. I've just
2:11.4	mentioned that your lovely face has been cut out on my wall. I have a podcast dream guest
2:17.8	wall, and your face has been there for about a year and a half. So this is a huge honour for me
2:24.2	to speak to you today, and about your story of Spek Savers. So thank you for coming on to my
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Holly Tucker MBE, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Holly Tucker MBE and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.