In 2007, Dirk Graber had a problem that no amount of clever code could fix. He wanted to sell glasses on the internet, and the people who made the glasses did not want to sell them to him.
Many frame makers, the Berlin business press later recorded, were wary of an online seller who might undercut their opticians. Graber had been talking the idea through with Lukasz Gadowski, the founder of Spreadshirt, who helped him sharpen the model. He then pulled in Björn Sykora, a friend from his student days, and two IT builders, Philipp Frenkel and Thilo Hardt.
What the founders had sensed early was that eyewear is a repeat, low-drama purchase that people would happily make from a sofa.
So the first job was not a website. It was persuasion. Get one maker to say yes, then the next. Without frames there was nothing to photograph, nothing to ship, nothing to sell.
The company was registered at the end of 2007 in Berlin and the shop went live in April 2008. A few early backers, among them DN Capital, XAnge and High-Tech Gründerfonds, put in a reported seven million euros by 2010. France came in 2010. In 2011 Graber brought in Mirko Caspar as co-CEO, and in 2013 the group bought the Swedish contact-lens seller Lensstore.
What the founders had sensed early was that eyewear is a repeat, low-drama purchase that people would happily make from a sofa. What they underestimated was how long the physical world would keep pulling at them. Mister Spex opened shops, then more shops. It was no longer just a web business.
In July 2021 it listed in Frankfurt, selling 15 million shares at 25 euros and raising 375 million euros. It was a peak. Forecasts were cut afterwards, and the share price slid. Caspar left in 2023. In 2024, Graber, by then the last founder still at the company, stepped down. A programme called SpexFocus shut all eight international locations and laid off around 150 people.
Tobias Krauss took over as CEO in April 2025. The company reported revenue of 174.9 million euros for 2025, runs 67 stores in Germany, and in 2026 began handing logistics and production to Arvato and Rodenstock while closing its Berlin-Spandau site.
The lesson is in the first month, not the IPO. Graber's real start-up capital was a few suppliers who took a chance on an outsider. Everything that followed, the cash, the bell in Frankfurt, the retreat, rested on that first yes.