Traditionally, men’s shopping habits have always been quite different to that of women. Girls like to touch textures, feel products, and try them on before they make a purchase. Men like to know the facts, learn about technical aspects, and then make a decision based on that data. Yet 50% of all our purchases are based on an emotional need, and that’s true of both of the sexes. So there must be more to it than just hard facts.

Eyewear is an interesting purchase as it contains elements of fashion; the frames and tint colours, and technical information; the lenses, the materials, the coatings. There is also a great deal of history and emotion tied to glasses – boys don’t make passes, bullying for being a four eyes – and nowadays we want to look good wearing our specs, and see as well as possible too.

In practice, we see that for both sexes fashion and function have to blend to give you the perfect pair of specs. Our data is roughly fifty/fifty for men and women taking up our try before you buy option, but of course we don’t know if they’re interested in the look or the technical aspect. We certainly have more male Internet shoppers, so this has obviously provided men with the perfect retail experience – they can collect information, assess the pros and cons, and they don’t have to trail around feeling and trying on the goods! E-mail enquiries are more likely to be from men too – are they less confident in making a decision without further help, or do they just like mailing?! Their e-mails are more likely to be of a technical nature too.

So when it comes to shopping boys will obviously always be different to girls even in cyber space, we just have to do our best to keep everyone happy!