Success Story Profile - Personal Optical
2008 BDC Niagara Entrepreneur of the Year Award Winner
“You’ve been Rachel’d!”
If you don’t know what those words mean, you haven’t done it ― you haven’t had your look revamped by one of Personal Optical’s jazzy pairs of eyeglasses. Her customers are often greeted by that exclamation, a sign that her rep is spreading.
Rachel Hill-Campbell, owner of Personal Optical in Thorold, isn’t satisfied with the same old styles C she wants hers to have that certain “wow factor” that will make her clients feel fabulous. Even seniors love her products, and she’s had many a client’s spouse call her up and thank her for steering his/her loved one away from the same old thing.
Rachel is a licensed optician with over 10 years of optical experience in the Niagara Region. She’s big on service, and it was that desire that gave her the impetus to start her own business. While she was still with her last employer, one of the customers, a senior with mobility issues, asked Rachel if she would be able to deliver her glasses. Rachel recognized a need, and started doing research into demographics while she was off work on maternity leave. She eventually decided to venture out on her own.
Rachel signed up for the Self-Employment Benefit Program here at the Business Development Centre in 2005 and opened Personal Optical for business in July of that year. She began her business as a mobile eye care service, bringing her glasses to other customers with mobility concerns or just those with busy lives. Personal Optical quickly became the optician of choice for retirement homes in the area. Rachel, with the assistance of two optometrists, currently provides eye care to eight seniors’ homes, which she visits monthly and as otherwise needed.
Having doubled her client base from the time she started her business, Rachel has opened an office and showroom to supplement her mobile service. The showroom is bright and welcoming with over 200 different styles of glasses that she’s personally selected. She specializes in helping customers choose a frame that not only highlights their features, but also works with their lifestyle and what they need the glasses for.
One of the benefits of being an independent business is that she can choose to sell products that meet her standards of quality and style, and she establishes long-term relationships with her clients to make sure that they “feel like a million bucks” when they wear her glasses. Some of her product lines include Versace, Roots, Vera Wang, Guess, and Soho, a line from Montreal. She’s also the supplier of an exclusive line called Pro-design, which features interchangeable arms that allow clients to mix and match frames as it suits them.
Rachel will be exhibiting her wares at the Small Business Club Niagara Trade show later this month, on February 20th, so take a look and see if you’d like to be Rachel’d!