A family-run opticians is celebrating 15 years of successful growth across East Anglia having overcome launching just before the financial crash and the global pandemic.

Duncan Hockney, who launched The Spec Factory with his dad, John, in 2007 credits offering value for money and good customer service for the business's continued success.

The father-and-son team opened their first optician's shop on the outskirts of Norwich and Mr Hockney said that the business was an instant hit and outperformed their growth targets.

This led to them opening their second shop in Ipswich in January 2008.

However, when the financial crash hit later that year Mr Hockney said that they found the it was a "challenging time" and it was "hard to grow".

He added: "We had to evolve with that and adjust our growth plans, adjust our overheads where we could.

"But we were still able to be profitable. Business-wise it made us a little more measured moving forward."

Their success saw them opening their third shop in Colchester, Essex in September 2009.

Looking to adapt to their customers' needs, the company pivoted away from their original model of just dispensing glasses to offering a complete optician service in 2011.

Mr Hockney said: "We found retaining customers was quite difficult and also customers said it was more convenient to have all done at the same time.

"So in 2011 we started investing in installing and offering full sight-testing service."

The pandemic, however, was a huge blow to the opticians as they had to shut their shops completely during the first lockdown.

"We had to close for initial three month period," Mr Hockney said. "We had no revenue coming in but we had government support, which helped.

"Nearly two thirds of our customers are over 60 and they didn't want to get their eyes tested because of safety concerns.

"So even though we re-opened in July 2020 we had very low demand and it was a tough year. It is very difficult to forecast this type of thing."

Surviving the pandemic, the business has since thrived and now see more than 100 customers a week.

Mr Hockney explained that demand picked up since February, in part due to a backlog in people needing to get their eyes tested.

He is also positive that the business will manage with the current cost of living crisis and is considering opening a fourth shop in Cambridge in the next nine months.