Clearly CEO Roy Hessel might have become a different leader had it not been for a four-year stint in the Israeli army.
The 35-year-old head of the world’s largest online eyewear seller interrupted his university education and met his obligation as an Israeli citizen by serving in that country’s military starting when he was 18.
“The experience gave me a lot of tools that I use today in business,” Hessel told Business in Vancouver during a recent interview at his corner office in a building in the Broadway Tech Centre.
It is a clean and bright space, unencumbered by the usual office art or any other indications that it is his personal workspace.
“Being in the military teaches you accountability and responsibility,” Hessel said, adding that he owes at least some resourcefulness and discipline to his stint in the armed forces.
It also might explain the loyalty that Hessel shows to staff, said Ben Kirshner, CEO of the New York-based digital marketing agency Elite SEM.
Kirshner knew Hessel when both were teenagers attending George Washington University in Washington, D.C., in the 1990s.
“Roy is fiercely loyal to his people, and I think that comes from his military background – it’s an instinct that he learned in the army,” Kirshner said.
Hessel was promoted to platoon commander before leaving the army after four years with the intention of going back to school. He got sidetracked from that aim, however, instead landing a job at the now-defunct Princeton University-based biotechnology company Physiome Sciences.
He did not take courses at Princeton during that 18-month stint but he learned a lot about biotechnology and business. Then, still in his 20s, he backpacked around Central America and re-enrolled in post-secondary education, taking economics and philosophy at Tel Aviv University in his native Israel.
He later would get an MBA from Rutgers University and complete Harvard University’s Owner/President Management executive education program.
“The last year of my studies in Tel Aviv, I worked full-time in venture capital as analyst,” he said. “It was a very interesting experience because you learn from other entrepreneurs’ mistakes.”
The company, Giza Venture Capital, was looking to establish roots in China, and it drafted Hessel to go to Shanghai to see what kind of business structure might make the most sense.
While the company eventually backtracked, reasoning that it lacked a competitive advantage in China and that its Israeli business was sufficient, Hessel was entranced by the world’s most populous country.
He thought living in China would be a great opportunity. All he needed, he said, was a solid idea for what kind of business to start there – “and a wife who was willing to go with me.”
Things came together when he met someone in the optical industry who convinced him that an e-commerce eyewear business in China would yield big returns. Hessel also met his future wife, Katia.
“Nothing meets success right away,” he said of his new life in China, which started in early 2006. “It was difficult that first year in China with a different culture, different language and a first year of marriage.”
He persevered and, after bootstrapping EyeBuyDirect with little cash and lots of work, started to watch the business grow.
People from around the world started buying from the company and posting photos of themselves with their new glasses on the Wall of Frame, which was a social network before Facebook became the global monolith that it now is.
Then Essilor came calling with an offer to buy a majority stake in EyeBuyDirect. Hessel accepted.
“There wasn’t much incentive for me to do a transaction with anyone because we were fast- growing and profitable,” he said. “[But] if you want to make an impact on this world, you need fast growth, you need scale.”
In January 2013, Essilor moved Hessel, his wife and two young children to Austin, Texas, where the family grappled with culture shock and Hessel focused not only on expanding EyeBuyDirect but also on scaling up Essilor’s other eyewear e-commerce division: FramesDirect.com.
Things were going well at both EyeBuyDirect and FramesDirect when Essilor opened its sizable wallet and spent $430 million, in April 2014, to buy Vancouver-based public company Coastal Contacts Inc.
Essilor’s CEO for the Americas, John Carrier, laid off Coastal’s then-president, Gary Collins, let Coastal’s founder, Roger Hardy, become an outside adviser and moved Hessel to Vancouver to take charge of all of Essilor’s e-commerce operations.
In addition to EyeBuyDirect and FramesDirect.com, that includes the newly rebranded Clearly in Canada, the Coastal by Clearly brand in the U.S., the Lensway by Clearly brand in Europe and the Contactsan by Clearly brand in Japan.
Combined, the company sells eyewear to customers in 150 countries.
Hessel has thrived in his new environment and has made several changes to the business – the May 13 worldwide rebranding being the most striking.
The changes go deeper than a new name, though, and reflect the company’s increasing focus on educating consumers about eyecare rather than on simply offering low prices.
Hessel has also done things such as take away the company’s long-standing policy of providing a first pair free. In its place, he implemented free shipping on all orders.
“The first-pair-free promotion devalued the product in the eyes of consumers,” he said. “We also learned that after getting the first pair free, consumers, in fact, did not live up to the post-experimentation loyalty that was originally hoped for.”
Cultural changes at Clearly also include involving staff in large meetings where Hessel explains corporate values such as lean manufacturing and a philosophy that he calls MASS: measurability, accountability, scalability and sustainability.
Without measuring things, it is hard to improve them, he explained. Accountability is key because one person failing to execute necessary tasks can doom the entire team to failure. Scalability relates to a constant vision for expansion, whereas sustainability is less about the environment than about fundamental principles such as integrity.
With a new daughter seven months old, the Hessel family is starting to put down roots in Vancouver.
“We feel that Vancouver answers many of the needs we have as a family – culture, environment, diversity,” Hessel said. “Vancouver’s just a healthy place.” •
