Monday Interview: Moin Valli, founder and Managing Director of Valli Opticians

The founder of an opticians which now employs 85 staff and has a turnover of nearly £5m after beginning from a single branch in 2005 has outlined the story behind the company’s success.

Moin Valli, from Huddersfield, founded Valli Group opticians with his wife Rachel, who is now the firm’s Marketing Director.

He said the firm’s clear focus on the real needs of the communities it serves had helped establish its reputation for responsible, high quality service.

The business has grown considerably and now has 14 practices in Yorkshire, Merseyside, Lancashire, Cheshire and Greater Manchester.

Valli, a father of three, used to be a house DJ working across the clubs in Leeds and still retains a passion for music. He studied optometry at Aston University in Birmingham.

He said his business initially began with the purchase of an established Huddersfield opticians practice, which had been trading for 65 years.

“It was quite an old fashioned place, nothing like the environment I was used to, but it had a really loyal customer base,” he added. “We invested in it, brought in new technologies, products and services and took on more staff as the business grew.

“I saw there were many other opticians businesses in the area with a similar kind of profile, so we became interested in acquiring those too. Every one of our 14 premises has come via an acquisition and we always buy an established practice which we then modernise and improve by bringing in new product lines.

“When we first started it wasn’t our plan to expand so quickly. But we’ve always been careful to differentiate ourselves from the big companies like Boots and Specsavers. We tend to avoid cut-price eye care, but offer good value for people who appreciate that in life ‘you get what you pay for’.

“There’s always going to be a market for people who like seeing the same faces whenever they come to the opticians.

“We offer longer appointments so we’re not rushing people and we offer a broader range of services than you’d normally get in an opticians – for example glaucoma and cataracts services, and precision tinted lenses for people with dyslexia which helps them with reading.

“And we’re based in convenient locations so people don’t have to go into town centres and hunt for somewhere to park.”

He stressed he and his wife are very committed to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), and last year launched a campaign to raise awareness of the importance of early years eye tests in children.

They are also in the process of organising the third Valli Rally – a seven-mile walk on 5 October which will raise vital funds for Kirklees Visual Impairment Network. Valli is a trustee of the network.

He said: “My parents came to England to work in the cotton mills. As a child I grew up around people who worked hard, saved money, supported each other and who also demonstrated entrepreneurial skill.

“Those influences are strongly reflected in my company’s mission statement and we have a big community out-reach programme. As a business we believe in making sustainable profits and we always look at the impact we have on our communities.

“We like to enhance the places where we’re based by promoting better health. So we give talks in schools to raise awareness of the importance of good eye health, we do free vision screening in schools and we put on talks in other locations such as churches and mosques.”

Valli said despite its conspicuous success to date, the company is not resting on its laurels.

“For the future, we’re still looking to expand further when the right opportunities come along,” he said.

“We want to acquire more practices, though for us it will always continue to be about quality rather than quantity. We’re now looking to launch a hearing health service. We hope to start that in the next quarter, or the quarter after that.”

 

 

 

 

 

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