A business with a vision

DRAPER — As an undergraduate at Brigham Young University in 1992, Jonathan Coon had a problem.

"I started wearing contact lenses in college," he said. "I had no money and no car, and the doctor's office was far away and expensive."

It seemed silly to Coon that a product that was already made and sold in a sealed package took a week and two trips to the optometrist's office to get, but he could get a pair of glasses in one trip if he was willing to wait an hour.

He saw an ad for a company that sold contacts directly to consumers and decided to solve his problem by running a similar business out of his dorm room. But BYU rules said he couldn't publish his room's telephone number.

"I only carried four products," Coon said. "I was in the dorms. It was very pathetic, very small. . . . I had to operate the business with no telephone."

But Coon's idea was solid, as was his business sense. And those early days at BYU taught him the importance of the right telephone number.

In 1995 he got it, securing the rights to 1-800 CONTACTS from a real estate agent in North Carolina. The rest is Utah business history.

The company, now based in Draper, has grown from about $500,000 in sales in 1995 to more than $211 million last year, Coon said. And as it celebrates the 10th anniversary of nabbing that all-important telephone number, its 35-year-old founder and chief executive officer is looking forward to an even brighter future.

We, not I

That's not to say it's always been easy for the company. Even getting the key 1-800 number was a challenge, Coon said.

"It took forever to find (the real estate agent), because he didn't answer the phone," Coon said.

Once the number's owner was tracked down, it took two months and a 28-page agreement to get the number transferred.

"That was the smartest thing we ever did," Coon said. "It makes everything else work."

Coon rarely, if ever, uses the word "I" when describing 1-800 CONTACTS' achievements. It's always "we," whether he is referring to his original partner in the business, optician John Nichols, or to the nearly 1,000 employees on the company's current "team."

" 'I don't actually do anything," Coon said. " 'We' do things as an organization.