Staying a start-up
Chris Beer, Founder, CEO and MD of George & Matilda Eyecare and 2018
Runner-up for Boss of the Year, talks about his start-up strategy and how
it affects his EA relationship, with Chief of Staff editor Bennet Nichol.
Tell me about how you came to start George & Matilda
I started from the ground up in the industry and worked my
way through night school. I started as an optical apprentice,
and I’ve been in the optical industry for 34 years now. My
last role before George & Matilda was as the Asia Pacific CEO
for Luxottica—which owns companies such as OPSM and
Sunglass Hut, and operates 600 stores in six countries.
After about 13 years of running the Asia Pacific from
Sydney, it hit me like a freight train. I said enough is enough.
What am I doing in all these hotel rooms? It gets pretty
lonely spending all that time on your own.
I promised my wife I would take six months off. After
three months she told me I’d only had about two days off!
There were a lot of people wanting to talk about Asia, the
culture and transformation in the retail world.
There were a couple of big exciting roles back in retail and
I had to make a choice, did I want to go back to the corporate
world? I think it was good for me, and I was good at it too,
but at the same time there was always an entrepreneurial
side to me that used to challenge the corporate world. It used
22 Chief of Staff | Issue 3 2019
to frustrate me that corporations weren’t as entrepreneurial
as I would have liked.
So, behind the scenes I quietly decided to research and
develop the opportunity of George & Matilda.
Starting a company is never a seamless process. What
were some of the key challenges you faced, and how
did you overcome them?
Trials and tribulations come up every day! It’s how you deal
with them that makes the difference. I’m fortunate enough
to have experience starting up big companies overseas so I
was able to understand what I would and wouldn’t do when
starting from a clean slate.
We created an environment where we could do the things
that we were the best at, and for the things that we weren’t
we found people that were really good and partnered with
them. We have a mindset where we don’t look for suppliers,
we look for partners. This also goes for how we put our team
together. We hire people for their profile. People who are
enthusiastic and want to make their mark on the world, and