Get closer, on impulse
Today, my Theatres Trust annual report arrived in the post. (I’m a Friend). Tucked away in the Corporate Supporters Supplement was a brief bit of spiel for the London Opera Glass Company, the business behind those little red cheap binoculars you rent in theatres if you are sat towards the back. I’ve paid for their products for forty years without ever thinking about who, what, where, when etc.
It turns out that they provide a fully managed service, at no cost to the theatre where they are installed and with a quarterly commission based on revenue. On hindsight this is an obvious model because theatres often struggle to justify Capex. This particular Company has the largest market share, with 21 London theatres and 27 provincial ones listed. Because some people wander off with the glasses after the show, the theatre is given a small replenishment stock which is presumably refreshed when the Company comes round to empty the coin boxes every quarter or so.
Their Company history suggests that Opera Glasses were first advertised in 1833, but that they pioneered the coin operated holder in 1913, requiring a sixpence to trip the locking mechanism. Before then, you presumably had to collect them from the cloakroom. Suddenly they have become an impulse buy as well as a pre-meditated one and you can get them out at any stage of the show. 
They went up to a shilling in 1968 and then 10p in 1975, motivated by decimalisation four years before and the introduction of VAT in ‘74. The next financial landmark was 1982 with the introduction of the 20p coin (& subsequent mechanism upgrade). Ten years later they were tweaked to take two 20p coins and for the Millennium the improved 50p mechanism was launched which has subsequently been refined by a new hi-tech system. This is presumably immune from the well known design fault of old, where if you clouted it with the heel of your shoe at the right place the top sprung open, something they refer to euphemistically as “unpaid for use”.
I’ve never stolen any but did buy a better pair to take with me, when I remember. Unsurprisingly, the Company still has a revenue stream from me if I’m not front stalls.
