Daysoft’s founder and chair, Dr Ron Hamilton CBE, revolutionised the way contact lenses were made. He’s been the vision and the driving force behind the company from the very beginning. Always innovating, always striving for better, inspired by a passion for making healthy, affordable eye care accessible for all.
In fact, it’s thanks to Ron that daily disposable contact lenses exist at all. After all, he invented them.
Early Days
Ron comes from a family of entrepreneurs. Just after WW2 his father bought a defunct factory that made curling stones and moved the whole operation closer to their home in Lanarkshire, Scotland. The factory was a second home to Ron, where he and his sisters were expected to do their part in building the family business.
“All three of us had to earn our keep doing something to help make the business feed us… So, for me, work and home life were inextricably linked. My Saturday job was to sweep the factory floor. [This involved] repeated filling of a kettle with water which I would sprinkle over the dusty floor by waving the spout from side to side. Then, with a brush twice my size I would attempt to sweep the granite dust into a pile before shovelling it into a bucket! Not much science, not much skill, but it did earn me my pocket money which, on a good day, could be 10 Bob (£0.50).”
Excerpt from Curling Stones to Contact Lenses
Ron left school with a HOOVER student apprenticeship and went on to study engineering. After a 20-year career which included experience of working in electronics and domestic appliances with ThornEMI as a divisional director, Ron was offered a job in an entirely different line of work; medical devices, in particular contact lenses.
Back Garden Beginnings to Big Business
During the 1980’s Ron was employed as vice-president of a major US eye-care company, CooperVision Inc. But driven by the belief that a daily contact lens is more hygienic, Ron and his then business partner Bill Seden installed a moulding machine in Ron's back-garden ‘annex’ and began designing a new process for the production of contact lenses.
They soon realised that they could cut the price of a soft contact lens by 99%, making daily disposable contact lenses an affordable option for everyone. So, in 1993, after securing enough funding, they opened a full-scale factory in Scotland and launched the first daily disposable contact lens, cutting the retail cost from £50 to just 50p per lens.
An Eye Care Revolution
After selling the patent to one of the world’s biggest eye care companies a few years later, Ron was disappointed that the price of daily contact lenses remained so high that they were still unaffordable for most consumers.
And so, daysoft® was born! Ron decided to re-enter the market with an affordable, high-spec daily disposable contact lens, capable of replacing other brands. He built the world’s first laboratory solely dedicated to the manufacture of daily disposable contact lenses, striving to lead the market with the safest, most affordable experience for all lens wearers.
Now, daysoft® is the only company in the world to make and sell contact lenses directly to customers. By cutting out the middle-man and passing the savings on to the customer, daysoft® has sold over 1 billion lenses to wearers around the world. Unique convenience, affordable prices and great eye-care benefits.
