Mentorship: The co-founders of Kits Eyecare have a vision for their team

If you listen to Roger Hardy and Joe Thompson describe it, building a company worth over $250 million sounds relatively simple: Find a market that’s ripe for disruption. Make it easy on the customer. Surround yourself with brilliant people.

That’s more or less the story of Vancouver-based Kits Eyecare, even if the actual nuts and bolts of it are much more complicated.

In 2017, Hardy and Thompson met at a board meeting in Vancouver. Thompson, a hardened retail executive with companies like Procter & Gamble and Amazon, and Hardy, the famed B.C. entrepreneur who sold contacts business Clearly to French eyewear giant Essilor for $445 million in 2014, quickly became acquainted.

“We’re both really like-minded about the way we thought about business,” says Thompson. “I’m always inspired by industries that haven’t been disrupted yet, and eyewear was one of them.”

Hardy was “blown away that Joe was a great communicator in a room full of great communicators,” he says. “The key insight for this category—which Joe brought to us—is: how do we make eyecare easy? Having had experience in the category and hearing it articulated, the light bulb went on. There is something left to do here. We can make good-quality $28 frames. You can buy them online. If there’s a problem, come back and we’ll find you another one. Why is there this level of complexity in something—vision correction—that 70 percent of people need?”

The two started going for coffee at a Starbucks right across from Vancouver’s Kitsilano Beach to pick each other’s brains. That evolved into meeting up for walks and eventually doing the famed local Grouse Grind hike together.

“I’m not as in shape as Roger—I asked a lot of open-ended questions so that he had to answer them,” says Thompson with a laugh. In Hardy, Thompson saw someone who was progressive and forward looking. “There’s a tendency to be drawn back into today. If everyone is focusing on where the puck is today, who’s going to look at tomorrow? Something he’s talked about over and over again is avoiding the pull of the past. What’s the next growth venture? And what’s the one after that?”

Hardy, Thompson and Sabrina Liak, a former managing director at Goldman Sachs, founded Kits Eyecare to make buying glasses easy and affordable. (Earlier this year, Liak stepped down from her president role to become a senior advisor with the company and pursue other opportunities. She remains on the board.)

These days, if you’re a Kits employee, odds are you spend most of your working life in one of three places. There’s the company’s head office in Vancouver’s financial district, its warehouse on East Broadway and its café/retail shop in the same former Starbucks space where Thompson and Hardy used to meet.

The warehouse, a multimillion-dollar investment that allowed the company to come into the market with low prices, spans 33,000 square feet and houses close to 80 workers.

Another major investment the founders made has been in the people they’ve brought in to help run the organization. Among the company’s 150 or so employees you’ll find some sparkling resumes. Take, for example, Tai Silvey, the company’s chief business development officer, who joined the company in January 2022 after six years of leading BCAA’s Evo Car Share program.

Or Edita Hadravska, Kits’ head of product design, who came over at the end of that same year after spending time as a design director with both Aritzia and Arc’teryx.

And, of course, there’s Zhe Choo, the company’s CFO. She was originally hired in August 2020 as the vice-president of finance. Her experience includes stints at leading accounting firms PwC and EY, as well as time spent in both space tech with Maxar Technologies and agtech with Segra International.

“It was the energy of the three founders, and the vision they have for Kits,” says Choo when asked why she made the leap to the company. “It was during COVID and they told me they wanted to do an IPO. I was like, ‘Really?’ But I could see the vision. During COVID, everyone was asking tough questions, and they were able to communicate the resilience of the business to investors. Each one of them brings a different leadership style and has guided the company to the vision that was set.”

In early 2021, the company pulled off that $55-million IPO, valuing its shares at $8.50. For most of 2022, the stock (like many during that period) fell on hard times, hitting a low of just over $2. “When the micro- and small-cap market retreated in 2021 and ’22, we put our heads down, battled back and have built an even better company,” says Thompson. “Being battle-tested is part of our DNA here. No one feels like it can’t be done.” Indeed, by July of 2024, the company was back up over $8.50 per share.

“Roger, Joe and Sabrina, they all lead with curiosity, which is really interesting,” says Hadravska. “They always ask questions of themselves and us… They have that inherent ability to look constantly for opportunities and the readiness to discard what we’ve done in the past in the name of trying a better way.”

Hadravska notes that, because of where the company is at in this stage of its evolution, the design team has both the high-level processes of a big organization and a closeness to the overall decision-making you’d get at a smaller outfit. “Over the last year and a half, I’ve learned more about business than I did over the rest of my career,” she says. “I’ve been exposed to a lot of the sides of the business.”

For Silvey, the big similarity between Kits and Evo is the customer focus. “The experience customers get when they [buy the glasses] is so key, and we use that to drive business. If customers love the experience, they’re going to tell more people about it.”

Like for Choo, the company’s founders played a big role in his coming over. “I was just overwhelmed by what Roger and the rest of the leadership team had done in their careers,” he says. “That’s why I joined. I hadn’t seen that type of diverse, successful group of people leading the way anywhere else in or around Vancouver.”

As far as what strategy the leaders will employ to continue to grow the company, Silvey thinks it’s about “cadence and continual attention.”

“Every single day we check in, make sure we’re on the right path, adjust if we need to and carry on,” he says. “That cadence supports the strategy—it’s amazing how much you can accomplish with that.”