(The Herald Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)WHEN Ron Hamilton, Scotland's archetypal wealthcreator, stands up to address the Scottish Executive's SMART awards this month, he will have more to say than thank you.

Although the serial inventorpreneur has received government grants for both his model start-ups, he has also been outspoken in his criticism of how non-Scottish companies "play the system" to extract cash. "I am grateful, but I also have a duty to speak up with hopefully constructive criticism, " he said.

Hamilton is not afraid of a fight for Scotland. His Blantyre-based business Daysoft, which sells contact lenses, is tiny but scraps in a market with three international eyecare conglomerates, one of which has already paid him more than GBP26m for his first business and its know-how.

Last week, he added the UK's supermarkets to his list of Goliaths to take on, when Daysoft launched a direct-to-consumer website which undercuts supermarket prices by a third.

Hamilton, who invented the disposable lens, has moved on to the disposable middle-man. However, his second revolution in the marketplace comes with a peace offering to small high street opticians of a GBP5-per-month rebate for each of their customers who migrates to the web.

Hamilton says he wants to "remain loyal to the independent opticians who have helped us develop our UK business".

He told Optician magazine he was not trying to start a price war, adding: "We don't supply Specsavers or D&A (Dollond & Aitchison) so they won't get a rebate . . . We are keeping ourselves, the optician and the patient in a single system."

He went on: "It's a competitive world out there and we are quite game to be in that competitive world. If we stay doing the same as Johnson & Johnson and Ciba Vision we are dead."

The third big player, Bausch & Lomb, is the one that paid Hamilton dollars33m for his Livingston-based Award business in 1996, just three years after it was set up with backing from Scottish Equity Partners. Bausch paid a further dollars15m for the intellectual property in 2000, after spending four years trying, but failing, to improve on it.

Hamilton, 64, grew up in a Lanarkshire family business making curling stones. From Uddingston Academy he joined Hoover at Cambuslang, which put him through college and prepared him for a career in management.

However, it was at eyecare group CooperVision that Hamilton ran into the classic inhibitor to innovation inside a big company, when his idea for a disposable lens was stifled - it was too threatening to the company's, and the industry's, highly profitable sales of lens cleaning solutions.

The same inhibitor still applies in Daysoft's giant competitors, as Hamilton found out when he was asked by Bausch & Lomb to stay on and develop disposables in competition with the US giant's other business models.

"I had a two-year contract and it was clear within about two weeks that there was no way I was going to be able to sell into Italy, as they had an Italian country manager who was on a bonus, and it was the same in France, Germany and Scandinavia."

But Bausch's share price has now been hit by litigation over alleged corneal damage caused by cleaning solutions. "We are going out to put solutions out of business, " Hamilton said. "I don't want people to clean lenses . . . part of the reason the price has been kept high for daily disposables is to protect the solutions and lens market segment. We are the only manufacturer that only makes daily lenses."

He left Bausch earlier than planned, after putting in place a new factory at Livingston - which still employs 1200.

Next he worked on development ideas, and "took a few holidays I hadn't had before", but says that being out of the market, then aged 57, was "horrible".

When his time-out expired in 2001, Hamilton set up parent company Provis with GBP1.7m of his own and GBP300,000 from Scottish Equity Partners.

The Daysoft lens now offers all the best features of its rivals - lowcost, high-comfort, UV filter, high water content - and has built sales from GBP173,000 in its first year to GBP3.25m in 2004. The plant now employs 110.

On launch, however, Hamilton had forecast it would hit GBP2m turnover in the first year. He explained: "The dilemma has been whether we sign up with a multiple or a supermarket and enjoy early growth, or keep our powder dry and wait for the signs to be auspicious and the market circumstances to be right."

He said the 2005 figures would show a pre-tax loss but only after continuing heavy charges for depreciation (around GBP400,000) and development.

Last year came the catalyst: UK legislation which followed Germany in lifting the barriers to buying lenses in supermarkets and over the internet.

The big eyecare groups immediately began offering product to the supermarkets at lower prices than those available to independent opticians.

"I am just off the phone to an independent in the high street, who is buying product from my competitors at a price which the supermarkets are selling at, " Hamilton said. "I won't join the queue to speak to a buyer at Tesco, or Specsavers, I would rather retire than do that."

In his first week of UK internet selling, 83per cent of customers were new and 17per cent from independent opticians.

Now Daysoft, which supplies 30 million lenses a year through independent opticians in 25 countries, hopes to quadruple sales in the UK to GBP3m by 2008 and lift its market share rapidly to 5per cent, using the cashf low to accelerate an embryonic but highly-successful web-based assault on the US.

"We ran a trial in North America and we had people from Hawaii to Montreal and San Francisco ordering lenses from Blantyre. My slogan is 'door to door the world o'er'."

Hamilton believes today's generation is more likely to be attracted to the entrepreneurial life because jobs are less fixed and secure. "My children have started their own businesses and I think that is going to be the model for more and more people." His son has opened a luxury bed and breakfast in the south of France and his daughter runs a f lorist shop in Bristol.

He says there is no "exit deal" with venture capital to sell out "after three, five, 10 or 15 years". He believes he can now demonstrate a business model that can "supply prescription devices at a very low cost to large numbers of people across the country and across the world".

He added: "I think when I have done that I will feel I have completed the story."

Life in the lens

Born in Bellshill, educated at Uddingston Academy.

Joined Hoover as apprentice engineer. Employed in management roles at Honeywell, Kimberley Clark.

Headed up Thorn EMI's UK domestic products division.

Left CooperVision to set up Award in 1993, sold to Bausch & Lomb in1996.

Set up Provis/Daysoft 2001.

Backer Scottish Equity Partners says: "Award was unquestionably one of the most professionally-managed start-ups we have been involved with, and in many ways the market opportunity for Provis is even more exciting."

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