The Vancouver Sun reports in its Saturday edition Roger Hardy started selling contact lenses on-line in 2000, just about the time the dot-com boom was going bust. The Sun's Gillian Shaw writes Canada was slow to join the e-commerce trend. The reluctance of Canadian retailers to embrace the on-line world did not stop Mr. Hardy from going on-line with not only a personal item, but a medical one requiring fitting. By 2004, the then 33-year-old Hardy had increased revenues at the on-line company to $10-million and by this week, when his company, Coastal Contacts, which operates Clearly Contacts, was acquired in a friendly $430-million takeover by France's Essilor International, the largest maker of prescription eyewear, it was selling 165 million pairs of contact lenses a year with an active customer base of five million for its contact lenses and glasses. "They basically saw a beautiful marketing niche there," said Lindsay Meredith at Simon Fraser University's Beedie School of Business. Prof. Meredith said Clearly Contacts focused on customer service with its on-line strategy. It offered a high level of service with easy returns and it let consumers virtually try on glasses using their photos.