Maddy Scavone · Maddy Scavone
As a kid Maddy Scavone assumed it was normal not be able to see people’s faces from a certain distance. Instead she learnt to recognise family and friends by how they walked.
Then, at age eight, she was diagnosed as being shortsighted and given her first pair of glasses.
“For the first time in my life people’s faces weren’t blurry. It was a memorable moment. It made me fascinated by eyes,” she told Yahoo Finance.
After that Scavone, 33, from the Gold Coast studied to become a paediatric orthoptist but in her years working with kids there was one simple product she wished someone would update.
The humble eye patch was needed by hundreds of her patients for a common childhood problem called called amblyopia, or lazy eye.
Suffered by over one in 50 Aussie kids, it can cause vision loss in the weak eye if not treated with a patch which covers the child’s stronger eye.
This forces the brain to use the weaker one, eventually regulating both to a similar level.
But, while it’s an easy fix, Scavone found getting children to wear the clinical, brown patches which look like bandaids, a struggle.
“Parents would come back in and say the kids would scream wearing the patch,” Scavone said.
“It delayed their vision progress by another few months.”
Maddy Scavone has been stocking her patches in Chemist Warehouse since 2023. · Maddy Scavone
Eventually Scavone decided to take matters into her own hands.
She started with some basic colourful designs for her patches — unicorns, pirates and cactuses.
“The challenge is to make them want to wear one…I included a reward chart to track progress and a zip lock pouch so they could be taken anywhere,” Scavone said.
Her trial, selling the patches on Amazon US was a huge success and in 2020 she brought them to Australia via her website Speckles.
“I didn’t spend any money on marketing. I approached eye clinics and pharmacies,” she said.
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Kerry White started stocking the patches and then, in November 2023, Chemist Warehouse took a gamble on them across 500 of its stores.
“The initial nine-month retail forecast sold out in just three months, leading to rapid expansion into Chemist Warehouse New Zealand nationwide within six months,” Scavone said.
With all her success she decided to take a punt on the final dream on her vision board — working with Disney.
As luck would have it the new Disney movie, Elio, featured a character with an eye patch and using that as her jump off point, Scavone pitched her product.
Maddy Scavone secured a deal with Disney, linked to the movie Elio. · Maddy Scavone
“The head of licensing had an experience of a child wearing a patch and he wanted a meeting,” Scavone said.
With that second piece of Disney magic, her dream was realised.
By June 2024 Speckles held licences to create Disney Princess and Marvel eye patches as well as Elio ones to launch with the movie in June 2025.
The business, which has expanded to stock kids sunglasses, has now seen average year-over-year growth of over 40 per cent across five years and revenue growth is over $1 million in sales through the website alone (excluding Amazon US and Chemist Warehouse sales).
Sales in the US have grown 75 per cent but Scavone said her most important figure is the number of kids she has helped: over 20,000 children.
“I’m helping so many more kids now than I could in clinic,” she said.
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