Ochis Story 04: Repair Shop
This is a story about perseverance and the importance of making mistakes.
Time passed, and our heroes got older. By the time Ochis founder Max has become a second-year student, he understood that his education wasn’t taking him anywhere; everything seemed boring and useless. The only thing he wanted to do was take control of his life and try his hand at work. That is when he started helping his dad at the repair shop.
When Max was left alone behind the counter for the first time, a client came to him with a completely ordinary request to fix the glasses but he got so nervous that his hand slipped and a tool left a scratch on the lens of the first-ever client. At that moment, the shame crushed him and all he wanted to do was disappear. Still, he braced himself and settled the conflict with the customer. Despite a rocky start, Max decided to follow his intended path. Over time, his dad has taught him the secrets of the craft, and Kolya's technical skills finally combined with Max's innovative thinking. They came up with new repair methods and solved the unsolvable problems together.
Over the years, Kolya has accumulated a huge collection of unusual vintage frames. Max had an epiphany: dad's imported glasses were actually very rare to find, and he didn't even understand it! There were unique frames from Gucci, Versace, Dior, Givenchy, Jean-Paul Gaultier and many more. So he created a website to sell them not only in Ukraine but also abroad, to collectors and connoisseurs from all over the world.
Thanks to the hard work of father and son, the business took off. Finally, their workshop found a new home. Max refurbished the office himself, starting with laying the floors and painting the walls and finishing with hunting for the best display counters.
Over time their repair shop has become famous by word of mouth for having the best results in Ukraine — if they couldn’t save your glasses, no one could.
People were lining up at the entrance from morning till night. It was a huge success!
The experience of working in his father's workshop gave Max an excellent understanding of how different manufacturers create glasses and which strengths and weaknesses each brand really has. Together with Kolya, they have repaired hundreds of glasses ranging from $5 to $2000, and now all this knowledge drives the creation of Ochis to perfection.