All Article articles – Page 121
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Safilo reduces job cuts while Luxottica signs Armani deal
Safilo has reached an agreement with the unions to limit the number of job cuts in Italy stemming from the loss of the Armani licenses to Luxottica. Safilo had estimated that it would have to eliminate 1,000 jobs among its permanent staff, but the number has been reduced to 670. ...
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Atol helps young practitioners
Atol, the fourth-largest French buying group in the sector is accelerating the opening of new stores through a program, called “Archipel” (archipelago), that helps young optometrists finance the establishment of their own practices, especially in shopping centers. The 11th Archipel store is set to open shortly and five others are ...
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Black Diamond buys Poc Sweden
Black Diamond Inc., an American group in the outdoor and ski sector, has sealed an agreement to take over Poc Sweden, a company that has grown rapidly in the last years with its distinctive ski helmets and other protective gear, ahead of a more recent diversification of its well-designed product ...
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Walgreens invests in Boots Opticians’ parent
Boasting a 1.6 percent sales increase on a comparable store basis, Boots Opticians has reported a turnover of £332 million (€414.4m-$518.0m) for the past fiscal year, ended on March 31. Good conversion figures were recorded in the stores, even though average transactions were down.The chain's operating profits increased, thanks to ...
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Coastal Contacts enters Brazil
After entering the Scandinavian and British markets, Coastal Contacts, the Vancouver-based online optical retailer, has started up a Brazilian website to sell its contact lenses, eyeglasses and sunglasses in the South American country. To better serve the customers there, Coastal is also planning to open a distribution center in Brazil.The ...
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Carl Zeiss Vision gets interactive
Having redesigned its presence on the internet, Carl Zeiss Vision relaunched its website on May 7. Aside from a new look and structure, it offers new content, addressing existing and potential clients at the retail level and among the general public.Opticians get an innovative form of sales support. Those who ...
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European contact lens wearers upgrade
Sales of multifocal contact lenses grew by 7 percent in value in the optical retail stores of the five major European countries during the 12-month period ended last April, according to the monthly census conducted by GfK through its retail panel, but they still represented only 5.8 percent of the ...
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CooperVision continues to outperform the market
CooperVision's sales grew by 5 percent to $288.0 million in the second quarter ended April 30, up by 6 percent in local currencies. In three categories that represent 61 percent of the company's turnover – multifocal, toric and single-use spherical lenses – its revenues increased by 12 percent, double the ...
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Italy’s Optovista supports opticians hit by the earthquake
Optovista, an Italian supplier of ophthalmic lenses, has announced that it will take practical measures to help optometrists in the Northern Italian region of Emilia, following the earthquake that repeatedly hit the area between the end of May and the beginning of June.Optovista is based in Calderara di Reno, a ...
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New eyewear show to be held in London
Optrafair, the British eyewear show held every other year in Birmingham, is getting fresh competition from a new event called The Eye Show, which is scheduled to run on Feb. 12-14, 2013, in the ExCel exhibition and conference center of London.Dawn Kime, who has 22 years of experience organizing similar ...
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Good figures from Specsavers
Specsavers pursued its double-digit sales growth in the latest financial year, ended in February. The big international optical retail group reported a few days ago a 10.9 percent increase to £1.7 billion (€2.12bn-$2.65bn) worldwide, after booking a 10.3 percent in the previous year to £1.5 billion.Sales grew by 4.4 percent ...
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Top Vision Group recovers from a fire
The Dutch supplier of store displays for optical frames and sunglasses, which counts some 3,000 optical retail stores all over Europe among its clients, suffered a big fire that completely destroyed its headquarters, factory and warehouse on May 12. None of its 30 employees were injured in the accident, which ...
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Ten years of restructuring for South Korea’s optical industry
We complete our focus on South Korea (Eyewear Intelligence Vol. 13, No. 8+9) with some official industry statistics that we have obtained since our last issue. One concerns the exceptional 70 percent growth in the country's exports of ophthalmic optic products between 2005 and 2010, from $282 million to $479 ...
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Randazzo grows by 2.5% on a comparable basis
The Randazzo Group, Italy's second-largest eyewear chain in terms of turnover and number of sales outlets after Salmoiraghi & Viganò, closed 2011 with sales of €111.1 million. In absolute terms that means growth of 4.8 percent, but on a same-size basis the figure comes down to 2.5 percent. At the ...
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Optic 2000 launches an e-commerce operation
The new virtual store of the French buying group, which went live last month, offers two distinct routes to the customer, one for prescription eyewear and the other for sunglasses and contact lenses. In the first case, the customer must pick frames and lenses at an affiliated retail store. In ...
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Lion Capital in line to control Alain Afflelou
Lion Capital, an international private equity firm, is the likely the become future controlling shareholder of Alain Afflelou. The current owner of the big French-based chain of franchised optical stores, Bridgepoint Capital, has granted Lion a period of exclusivity to come up with a definitive purchase agreement.According to reports, the ...
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Sunglasses are not a priority for many Americans, study finds
The Vision Council has put out a new report, “Finding Your Shades, Protecting Your Vision,” that bemoans Americans' cavalier attitudes toward sunglasses. More than 55 percent of adults in the U.S. lose or break their sunglasses every year, but even worse, 27 percent don't wear sunglasses at all. This lack ...
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Gatto Astucci joins the new Tangerin Group
Italy's second-largest producer of eyewear cases has a new corporate structure. Tangerin has been established to put Gatto Astucci under the same umbrella as two other companies involved in the supply of other products and services to retailers: Sarno Display, specialist in display cases, and Think D-Sign, a company that ...
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Better results for Hal’s optical retail sector
The optical retail chains owned by Hal Holding experienced a 2.5 percent sales increase on a comparable store basis in the first quarter of this year. In absolute terms, their sales went up by 5.1 percent to €585.7 million, with a 4.7 percent increase excluding the effect of acquisitions and ...
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Oakley launches a big campaign in Europe
Already launched last month in the U.S., Oakley's new “Beyond Reason” campaign is going live now throughout Europe, Middle East and Africa (Emea), where sales of the brand are growing at an annual average of about 20 percent, faster than in the rest of the world. The campaign centers on ...
