All Article articles – Page 132
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A new Spanish eyewear firm, to be run by Antoni Olivella
Antoni Olivella, the famous Spanish industry veteran who has presided in recent years over the European Sunglass Association and Eurom 1, the European federation of national ophthalmic industry associations, is the key personality behind this new Spanish company, called Vistamax, which showed for the first time at the Mido fair ...
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Okia hires Chinese artists for new design ideas
One of the first applications of this design investment is a collection of women's eyewear for three age ranges, called 20-30-40 HDA 270° . For women from 25 to 30 the model is called Youth, the 30-to-35 age range has a line called Bloom and the model for 35- to 40-year-olds ...
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The industry turns its attention to Japan
The major Japanese companies in the ophthalmic industry have reported little or no damage from the devastating natural and nuclear disaster that affected the northern part of Japan following the earthquake and tsunami that hit the region on March 11. Some of these companies and others have started to offer ...
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Safilo’s industrial reorganization is clarified
Safilo reached a final agreement on the terms of the restructuring its manufacturing facilities in the Friuli region with local authorities and the unions at the end of February. In contrast with the underlying meaning of our article on the subject in the last issue of EyeWear Intelligence, published on ...
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Italy’s Galileo forms a loyalty club
Oftalmica Galileo, the historic Italian lens producer now flying under the French flag, is currently benefiting on its home territory from the marketing strategies of its French parent company, BBGR. The same model, intended to maximize the clients' loyalty, is being applied in various countries, but adapted to the individual ...
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CooperVision outperforms the market
It apparently did so for the first quarter of its own fiscal year, ended last Jan. 31, as well as for the full 2010 calendar year. While the total soft contact lens market increased by 5 percent in constant currencies in both periods according to the Contact Lens Institute, rising ...
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Shamir’s profits decline
Shamir Optical posted a 5.4 percent increase in revenues to $39.1 million in the fourth quarter but the gross margin slipped to 54.0 percent of sales from 55.0 percent a year earlier and the operating margin narrowed to 8.6 percent from 12.3 percent.Profitability was affected by the mix of products ...
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Polaroid Eyewear goes vintage
Polaroid Eyewear launched a new line of sunglasses called Best Under the Sun last month, consisting of 10 modern frames inspired by some of the most iconic designs that it put out between the 1930s and the 1980s, but using new materials. First shown at the Fashion Week in New ...
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Rodenstock prepares a major launch
By the time of the next Silmo fair in Paris, the recently refinanced German company should be able to launch an important new product in the area of free-form individualized progressive lenses – an area where Rodenstock played a pioneering role. It should also provide an interesting reply to the ...
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OBE has a new structure
The German company, whose full name is Ohnmacht & Baumgärtner, has divided its business into three new divisions. Headed up by Erik Schäfer, the optic division remains the most important one within the group. Schäfer also run Trevista, a division that offers surface inspection system in the industrial machine vision ...
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Italian eyewear exports grew by 17.3% in 2010
The first quarter of 2011 is likely to confirm the trend set by Italian eyewear exports in 2010, with growth expected to reach around 15 percent. In contrast with this rosy picture, there is also confirmation that the domestic market is remaining stagnant, after losing 2.5 percentage points in 2010. ...
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Luxottica sees 2011 sales lifted by emerging markets
Luxottica forecasts that 2011 sales will show high single-digit growth, at constant exchange rates, underpinned by an increase of about 20 percentage points at both wholesale and retail level in emerging markets. Wholesale sales are anticipated to rise by about 10 percent and comparable store sales by 4-7 percent in ...
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Italo-Canadian alliance in low vision
Eye Technologies, an Italian company specializing in optical instruments for low vision, has been appointed distributor in the Italian market for a world leader in this sector, Human Ware, a Canadian firm renowned for having developed electronic systems for dealing with this condition. The agreement leaves Eye Technologies free to ...
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Allison grows, plans new brand
Allison is in the process of negotiating licensing terms with a new brand, but no further details are available at the moment. The past two years have seen some serious reorganization of the brand portfolio. When profitability and sales volumes were seen as lacking, licenses for such famous names as ...
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Essilor sees growth rising on a comparable basis
The management of Essilor International is quite confident that this year it will be able to at least maintain the 18.1 percent operating margin recorded in 2010, while the company's organic growth should continue to improve gradually in the course of the year, going from an annual rate of 3.6 ...
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Mido for better vision
Ramping up before the fair officially starts tomorrow, Mido's organizers have already kicked off their “Mido for Your Vision” initiative in cooperation with a non-profit group, Vision + Onlus, and with the city of Milan sponsoring. The project, which started last Monday, aims to support vision health through a special ...
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Oakley launches sunglass customization in Europe
Oakley expects sales of men and women's sunglasses to enjoy double-digit growth in 2011, and one of the growth drivers this will be the introduction of its customization service in Europe.Customized products represent about 30 percent of the brand's retail sales and has been registering an annual growth of about ...
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Safilo cuts workers and factories
From March 1, most of the workforce in the Friuli plants is on standby, covered by the Italian “Cassa Integrazione” system, which ensures that workers continue to get paid when on temporary layoff. The only exception is a group of 162 employees currently working on new series, who will be ...
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Salmoiraghi declines with the Italian market
The Salmoiraghi & Viganò Group, Italy's leading optical retail chain with over 500 stores, closed its fiscal year last Sept. 30 with consolidated turnover of €181.2 million, 3.5 percent off compared with 2008-09, close to the overall 2.5 percent drop recorded by Italy's domestic eyewear market. Ebitda was €16.3 million, ...
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Luxottica hikes profits, dividends
Luxottica booked an adjusted net profit of €402.7 million in 2010 compared with €299.1 million a year earlier and decided to increase the dividend per share to €0.44.from €0.35. The company confirmed preliminary data released in January (see EyeWear Intelligence of Jan. 17) indicating that full-year revenues rose by 13.8 ...
