这是一个关于大学生创业的传奇故事。2004年,21岁的英国大学生杰米因为买了一副眼镜而逐步开创了自己的事业,并以1000英镑学生贷款作本金成功掘得他人生的“第一桶金”。如今,他创立的公司已经成为全球最大的网上配镜零售商。去年,26岁的杰米获颁英国表彰企业成就的最高荣誉——英国女皇企业促进奖(Queen’s Award for Enterprise Promotion),成为了该奖史上最年轻的获得者。杰米同时也成为了美国《福布斯》杂志推举的“还没毕业就成为百万富翁”的年轻企业家中的楷模。
英式发音 适合泛听
The Introduction创业灵感
Jamie: My name’s Jamie Murray Wells and I’m the founder of Glasses Direct, which is an on-line 1)prescription glasses company, so we 2)revolutionized the way people buy their glasses. They simply go to the high street, get their prescriptions, go on our website and basically we deliver the glasses at a 3)fraction of the high street cost.
Interviewer: How did you 4)get your business off the ground?
Jamie: I was at university doing my finals and, basically, I bought a pair of glasses and I just thought, “This is just a piece of wire and a piece of glass,” and “Why is it costing me £150?”, and I guess I looked at it and just thought, you know, “There’s more metal in a teaspoon than a pair of glasses,” I mean, “Why is it costing so much?” and I guess at that point, you know, I knew something was wrong and I was determined to do something about it, so I found a laboratory that actually made the glasses, and I sent up my prescription and they sent down a pair of glasses, and so on one hand I was holding a pair that cost £6 and in the other hand I was holding a pair that cost £150 and I thought, “Hey, there’s a business opportunity here.”
杰米:我叫杰米·莫里·韦尔斯,我创办了“眼镜直销”—— 一个提供在线配眼镜服务的公司。我们彻底改变了人们购买眼镜的方式。他们只需要去主流商铺,拿到自己的验眼配方,然后登陆我们的网站,基本上我们配送的眼镜费用只是商铺收费的一小部分。
采访者:你是怎样开始这门生意的呢?
杰米:那时我在读大学,准备我的期末考,基本上就是,我买了一副眼镜,我就想“这不就是一根金属线和一块玻璃嘛,怎么就花掉了我一百五十英镑?”我想我当时应该就是看着这眼镜,觉得“一个茶匙包含的金属都比这一副眼镜多”,我的意思是,“怎么一副眼镜就会这么贵呢?”……应该就是在那时候,你知道啦,我明白到这存在着不合理,所以我决心要做点什么。因此我找到了一个制作眼镜的实验室,然后我把我的验眼配方发给他们,他们给我送回了一副眼镜,这样,我一手拿到一副只需要六英镑的眼镜,另一手拿着那副一百五十英镑的眼镜,我想,“嘿,这里就有一个商机嘛!”
The Beginning & the Future 回顾与展望
Interviewer: Right, first things first; how did the market react to you and your business?
Jamie: Uh huh. Badly. But the more they kick and scream, you know you’re doing something right, and we’ve kinda kept that in mind since the start. I mean, what we did essentially, you know, I was a 21-year-old and I was knocking on the door of the industry and saying, “Hey the way you’re selling glasses is wrong,” you know, and no one likes it when you break up a 5)monopoly, and, but it, you know, I couldn’t recommend it more to anyone because we’re able to do old things—selling glasses—in a brand new way, which delivers savings to the customer and high quality and all the rest of it.
So when we were doing this, the high street reacted very, very badly and, you know, within weeks of actually launching our website we…one of our main suppliers of the actual glasses was under so much pressure from competing high street chains that they actually stopped doing business with us and our website went down for about a week. It almost put us out of business.
We’ve had everything from, I mean, they’ve tried every trick under…out of the book to try and, you know, stamp us out, but, you know, we’re determined to continue doing business and, at the end of the day, it’s the customer that really wins. They’re the ones that are getting thesavings.
Interviewer: What is next for you and what is next for your business, Glasses Direct?
Jamie: Well, so the aim is still to be the 6)dominant, you know, global eyewear provider, and you know, it’s a huge market—it’s about 40 billion in the UK and the US. You know, we’re still the market leaders on-line. We have to maintain that 7)positioning, we have to grow our market share. You know, we want to take the on-line 8)segment up to at least 10%, and we’re busy executing that.
采访者:好,先说说最重要的事。市场对你和你这门生意的反应如何?
杰米:嗯……非常糟糕。但别人的反对越激烈,就越能肯定自己的方向没错,我们从开始到现在都是这么认为的。我的意思是,那时我们所做的本质上是,你知道,当时我21岁,而我却是在尝试敲开这个行业的大门,跟他们说“嘿,你们这样销售眼镜是不对的”,你知道,当你要打破一种垄断的时候,别人是很反感的,但,你知道,我恨不得向所有人推广,因为我们可以用一种全新的方式来做卖眼镜这门传统生意,让客户省钱又获得高品质的产品,还能享有其他所有的好处。
所以当我们这么干的时候,实体商铺的反应非常非常恶劣,你知道,事实上,在我们网站正式启动几周后,我们……我们其中一个主要的眼镜供应商迫于我们的竞争对手——主流连锁眼镜店的压力中断了与我们的合作,使我们的网站关闭了大概一周时间。那次差点儿就让我们倒闭了。
我们经历了种种磨难,我是说,他们(主流连锁眼镜店)尝试用各种伎俩……非法的小把戏尝试要将我们赶出这一行,但你知道,我们是铁了心要把这门生意坚持到底的,后来,最终的胜利者是顾客——他们才是享受了实惠的人。
采访者:对你和你的“眼镜直销”来说,下一个目标又是什么?
杰米:嗯,我们的目标仍然是要占据市场主导,成为全球主要眼部用品供应商。你知道,这是一个很大的市场——英美的产值就有大约400亿。你知道,我们依然是网络市场的主导者。我们要保持这样的势头,要提升我们的市场份额。我们要将网络市场份额至少提升到10%,我们正为实现这个目标而努力。
The Tips for Success 创业须知
Interviewer: What is the most memorable piece of advice you’ve been given?
Jamie: The most memorable piece of advice is to “start small and grow big; start big and go bust.” And I think we used it in particular because we started really, really small; we started from the bedroom of my student house, and a lot of people, when they start out in business, they think maybe there’s a 9)stigma attached to starting really small from the garage or, you know, from home, but I say start as small as you can, minimize the risk until you make the decision to actually 10)take the plunge and go for it, in which case you wanna rocket your growth as quickly as possible.
Interviewer: If you can, can you give us your Top 3 tips for sort of a budding entrepreneur that maybe has that small idea?
Jamie: Yeah, sure. No.1, test it; No.2, go for it; and No.3, measure it; and, if I’m allowed a No.4, if you can’t measure it, don’t do it.
采访者:在你获得的建议中,哪一样是最值得你牢记的呢?
杰米:记得最深的建议是“始于小而见长,始于大而见灭”。我觉得我们把这个建议发挥得特别好,因为我们的起点真的很小很小;我们的第一步是从我学生公寓的卧室里迈出的,很多人,当他们创业时,他们觉得,以车库或者,你知道,自己的家作为起点也许是一个耻辱,但我要说的是,从小开始,量力而行,将风险降到最低,直至你下定决心要放手一搏,并全力以赴去实现目标,因为这样,你才能尽快地让自己快速壮大。
采访者:可以的话,你能给有初步想法的未来企业家说说创业的三个最重要的提示是什么吗?
杰米:当然可以。第一,测试可行性;第二,全力以赴实现目标;第三,评估衡量;要是容许我说第四点的话,那就是,如果你衡量不来的话,就不要做了。
翻译:Terry
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