All Article articles – Page 144
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Essilor Buys Fgx International6
Hubert Sagnières, the former chief executive of Essilor of America who is being promoted from chief operating officer to CEO of the whole group on Jan. 1, had several explanations for Essilor International's rather unexpected diversification into readers through its acquisition of FGX International, the North American leader in this ...
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Mister Optik Expands Its Retail Network Through Franchises In Italy, Abroad
Mister Optik, a regional low-cost optical retail chain based in the Tuscan city of Lucca, is accelerating the development of its network of stores to cover not only the domestic market in but possibly also Italy, France, Spain, Greece and the U.K. Last year, Mister Optik sold five stores ...
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Alain Mikli Acquires Vuarnet Sunwear
The recently refinanced Alain Mikli International has acquired a 75 percent stake in Sporoptic Pouilloux, the licensee for the once famous sunglasses that bear the name of a former French Olympic ski champion, Jean Vuarnet, who won the 1960 Winter Olympic Games in Squaw Valley. The 75-year-old Joseph Hatchiguian, who ...
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Italian Sunglasses Have Been Hard Hit By The Recession
The forecasts put out by Italian specialists confirm the decline in the eyewear market for 2009. The Databank Institute estimates that sunglasses will be hardest hit on the domestic market, down by between 10 and 20 percent, while the prescription eyewear market lost between 4 and 7 percent. Italy's ...
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Coopervision Performs Better Than Expected And Better Than The Market
In the first nine months of the 2009 calendar year, CooperVision didn't fare too badly against the global soft contact lens market as compiled by the Contact Lens Institute, a market research group. The market for soft contact lenses grew by 3.1 percent in the nine months, accelerating to 4 ...
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Eschenbach Buys Tura In The U.S.
Germany's Eschenbach Group has bought Tura, an American company that markets its own lines in the U.S. in addition to territorial licenses for the brands Ted Baker, Lulu Guinness, Tourneau and Goldfinch. Terms of the merger deal have been kept confidential. Coupled with Eschenbach's acquisition of International Eyewear of ...
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Closing The Deal With Hal, Safilo Wins The Tommy Hilfiger License
Safilo unexpectedly announced that it had signed a five-year license agreement with Tommy Hilfiger Group., taking over from the U.S.-based Viva International group. The deal is valid until 2015, with the possibility to extend it for a further five years. It covers the design, production and distribution of prescription frames ...
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Your Customized Eyewear From Texas
«Design your own handmade eyewear» is the slogan of Randy Barnett, an American with an original set-up in Abilene, Texas, called Indivijual Custom Eyewear. The idea is based on the fact that no two faces are identical ? the proportions between the various parts of the face, the distance between ...
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Visibilia Gmbh's Tom Tailor License Runs Until 2014
Visibilia Spa is still in the process of resolving its recent liquidity crisis. Activity continues to fall, with half the company's Italian workforce currently benefiting from temporary layoffs under the terms of Italy's protection system. However, company officials point out that two other companies owned by the same shareholders in ...
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Hal Agrees To Refinance Safilo, After Obtaining 50.99% Of Its High-yield Bonds
By its newly extended deadline at 5 PM yesterday, Hal Holding, the investment company that controls GrandVision and Pearle Europe, had received 50.99 percent of Safilo's high-yield bond in a public tender that had met the resistance of the bondholders because of the lower price being offered. The ...
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Salmoiraghi Adds Ophthalmology And Radio To Its Services
Salmoiraghi & Viganò (S&V) has refurbished its 700-square-meter location, spread over two floors, in Piazza San Babila, in the center of Milan, for a cost of more than €1 million. The format will be rolled out in other Italian cities, starting with Turin. The Milan store, designed by the ...
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Hoya Vision Care Reports Better Margins And Better Sales In Europe And Asia
The company has set up a new subsidiary in Vienna, Hoya Lens Österreich, with its own sales force and its customer service team, supervised by Martin Decker. It has started to take care of the Austrian market, which was previously handled directly from Germany. The vision care division of ...
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Ioft Is Still Bringing In New Visitors
A record 507 exhibitors showed at the International Optical Fair Tokyo held Oct. 27-29, a 2.8 percent increase over the 2008 edition. In addition, 15,868 buyers went to the Japanese show, just slightly over the figure last year, along with 122 executives from top eyewear retail stores in China, Taiwan ...
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Guildinvest Changes The Rules And Grows Faster Than The Market
The French cooperative is forecasting an increase in turnover of 2.2 percent this year for the 1,380 stores that operate under its own Krys, Vision Plus, Lynx Optique, Lun's and Vision Originale banners. This is more than double the estimated 1 percent increase in the French optical market overall. After ...
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Logo Signs A New Children's License
Logo has signed a manufacturing and distribution license for the Barbapapa brand name for children's frames. Since the corresponding French family of cartoon characters was launched in 1974, the colorful, imaginary universe of Barbamama, Barbabelle, Barbotine and Barbouille has attracted legions of fans through television, books and objects. Logo's first ...
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Small Gain For Ecca Despite A Comp Decline In The Third Quarter
Eye Care Centers of America had a 1.3 percent increase in sales to $136.1 million in the third quarter ended Oct. 3, but comparable store sales fell by 2 percent and net income dropped by 34.1 percent to $5.4 million. Revenues from the managed-vision segment grew by 11.7 percent. ...
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Comparable Sales Go Down At Hal
Third-quarter revenues for the optical retail division of Hal Holding grew by 1.4 percent to €510 million on a 1.8 percent drop in comparable store sales in constant currencies. Operating results also declined, by 4.2 percent to €69 million. For the first nine months of the year, comparable store ...
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Marcolin Records Declines Everywhere Except At Home
For the first nine months of 2009, Marcolin suffered a 7.5 percent drop in revenues to €130.9 million. This was a 9.5 percent drop on a currency-neutral basis. Ebitda (operating profit before amortization) fell by 45.0 percent to €8.2 million, and Ebit (operating profit before interest and tax) plunged by ...
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Fielmann Defies The Economy
The difficult economic situation did not prevent the leading German optical retailer from recording a 5 percent sales increase in the third quarter on a same-store basis in the countries where it operates, marking a major improvement over the 2 percent growth of the first half. While no recent estimates ...
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Deteriorating Results At Safilo
Separately, Safilo released third-quarter results showing that its sales dropped by 7.1 percent to €212.6 million, underperforming especially in Asia and in prescription frames. At stable currency rates, the decline reached 7.7 percent. Safilo ended the quarter with a 79.1 percent drop in Ebitda (operating income before amortization) to ...
