United States
Paul Slusher is the owner, founder and CEO of Contacts For Less. Founded in 2017 and based in British Columbia, the Canadian family business grew out of the eye care practice he and his wife, an optometrist, ran in New Westminster.
They could see contact lens shopping moving online. They also wanted the company they built to reflect their values, supporting their employees and family while contributing to causes their customers cared about.
“If we were going to build anything,” Slusher says, “it had to have some sort of value system, some sort of heart.”
In this conversation, he explains what that meant from the beginning and why giving customers a choice became part of the business.
Why Contacts For Less? Why did you build this company, and what did you have in mind?
Paul: My wife is an optometrist, and we had a small eye care practice in New Westminster. We both knew that contact lenses were going online like never before. But we didn’t want to just be another company selling products and making money.
My wife and I have a very global view of the world. From the beginning, we believed that anything we built had to have a value system, a beating heart that cared about others and about more than profits.
The goal was to build a successful, sustainable company that could pay its employees and take care of our family. And, possibly most importantly, we wanted to connect ourselves with important causes: hunger, human trafficking, the effects of war, human rights and democracy.
Whatever our customers worry about or care deeply about, we wanted to give them an option to direct a portion of each purchase towards a cause that matters to them.
That really stemmed from one idea: business doesn’t have to just take. It can also give back.
We made that part of the company from the very beginning in 2017. It was central to what we wanted to build.
How does that show up in a customer’s actual experience?
Paul: When customers come to the site, they choose their contact lenses, and during checkout they can also select the charity or nonprofit they want to support. We have around 75 different groups available.
We have a default cause each month, and most often that is support for food banks across Canada. We feel that hunger in our own country is something we should be helping address. But customers can choose a different group from the available options.
They make that selection in the cart during checkout, and a portion of their purchase goes to that group. We’ve tried to make it as easy and seamless as possible.
I want to emphasise that we want our customers to make the choice. It should reflect what matters to them.
We’ve also had customers write to us and say, “How about this group?” or “What about this cause?” I think roughly ten to twelve groups have been added because of those suggestions.
What do you want someone to remember after buying from you, even years later?
Paul: I want them to feel that it was good to buy from a Canadian, family-owned company, and that what they did with their money mattered.
That feels good to me as a customer. That’s what I want our customers to take away.
A final thought from Paul
Paul: I just want to add one more comment at the end of the interview.
One of the things I would love our customers to grasp from our example is that we can choose the future. We can choose what kind of business environment we have.
We don’t have to give up on people running businesses, innovating and finding new ways to sell, manufacture or present products. That’s part of the human innovation process.
But that doesn’t mean we have to give up on our planet, our communities, our idealism or our morality. I believe those things can coexist very well. Business and sustainability can work hand in hand, without the conversation getting lost in political labels.
I want our customers to realise that we all have a choice. Contacts For Less has chosen to be this type of company.
And if you’re the kind of person we are, if these are the things that matter to you, Contacts For Less really should be the only choice.
Closing reflection
What stays with me from this conversation is the importance Slusher places on giving customers a say. A company can decide to donate money, but inviting the customer to choose the recipient makes that decision personal. The causes people care about become part of an otherwise routine purchase.
His view also leaves room for the practical demands of running a business. Employees need to be paid, a family needs to be supported, and the company needs to remain viable. He sees those responsibilities as compatible with giving something back.
That is the invitation at the centre of Contacts For Less: to consider the kind of business your purchase supports, as well as the product you are buying. Slusher has made his choice about the company he wants to build. He is asking customers who share those values to help it grow.
We will never sell your information to anyone.
