All Article articles – Page 166
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Moschino Switches To Allison From Luxottica
The Italian fashion house has picked Allison, a fast-growing Italian producer, to replace Luxottica, the sector's leader, as its eyewear partner. The parties signed a 5-year renewable contract and the first collection, to be presented in August, will consist of 25 sunglasses and 25 optical frames. Ten new styles will ...
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Amo Improves Sharply
The American company's operating profit jumped by 180.0 percent to $27,244,000 in the 1st quarter ended March 30, on sales growth of 5.6 percent to $251.7 million. The gross margin shrunk by 1 percentage point to 62.5 percent. Net earnings more than quadrupled to $12,109,000. Growth in the quarter was ...
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Inspecs Wins Queen's Award, Enjoys Indian Culture And Pure Design
The British eyewear company has won the Queen's Award for international business after reporting 500 percent growth in its sales of eyewear outside of the UK over the last three years. The award will be given to the company's founders, Robin Totterman and Chris Smith, at Buckingham Palace this July. ...
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Falling Under New Ownership, Boots Opticians Expands Franchising
Boots Opticians plans to open between 40 and 50 franchised practices over the next year, half of which will be in-store and half will be free-standing. This follows on from the 24 franchised practices that Boots Opticians has already opened and which have generated ?very good? results. The first eight ...
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Marcolin Will Sell Or Restructure Cebe
Cébé, the French sports eyewear brand that Marcolin acquired in 1999, is up for sale. Negotiations are currently underway with a potential purchaser who has offered to buy the brand, but its name cannot be revealed at this stage. If a satisfactory deal is not concluded, the Italian group will ...
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Changes At The Top For Cooper Companies
Just as it is about to complete the painful 3-year-old integration of its CooperVision (CVI) subsidiary with Ocular Sciences, bought in January 2005, Cooper Companies has announced that CVI will move into the parent company's head office and that there will be some major management changes. Gregory Fryling, president ...
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Fielmann Continues To Expand In The Germanic Countries
In the 1st quarter, Fielmann's profit before tax climbed by 16.9 percent to €29.3 million and its net income rose by 14.7 percent to €19.3 million. Consolidated sales increased by 5.9 percent to €203.6 million, but including franchisees' sales and VAT they were up by 7.7 percent to €243.0 million. ...
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Sover Gets The Kiton License For Its Luxury Eyewear
Sover has signed a 5-year agreement to produce sunglasses and prescription eyewear for Kiton, an Italian fashion brand located in Naples. The partners are hoping to generate €8 million in the first 3 years, subsequently followed by annual revenues subsequently of around €5 million. Precious materials such as gold will ...
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Hoya Vision Grows Faster
Aided no doubt by the depreciation of the yen, Hoya raised its sales of vision care products by 18.8 percent in the 4th quarter of its financial year ended last March 31, reaching a level of 33.1 billion yen (€203.3m-$276.5m), but the operating margin of the segment declined to 17.4 ...
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Rodenstock Looks At Franchising In The Uk, Too
Rodenstock is forecasting that its new franchising venture for optical practices in the UK will generate a multi-million pound business over the next five years. It is promoting the venture as ?Quality without Compromise,? without imposing its own products. The company estimates that it will generate over £20 million (€29.4m-$40.0m) ...
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French Opticians Get More Power To Prescribe Lenses
The French government has issued new regulations that allow certified optometrists to adapt an eye doctor's prescription to the new conditions of the patient, informing the doctor of the change, and the social security system will reimburse the cost of the corresponding lenses. The optometrist will wear a badge showing ...
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Guildinvest Improves Market Share
The combined sales of the 1,386 optical stores affiliated with Guildinvest under its own banners increased by 5.8 percent to €793 million, with 3.0 percent growth on a same-store basis. The banners are Krys, Lynx Optique, Vision Plus and Vision Originale in France, plus the Vision & Co. joint venture ...
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Hal Trust Makes An Investment In Switzerland
GrandVision, the French-based company that recently became a 100 percent owned subsidiary of HAL Holding, has acquired a 30 percent stake in Visilab, one of the leading optical retailers in Switzerland, in exchange for its six Swiss GrandOptical stores and for an unspecified cash payment. GrandVision also has a right ...
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Luxottica Is Very Optimistic
As the current net debt level is only 1.31 times earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA), Luxottica can keep up with its current pace of a small or medium-sized acquisition every two to three months and its balance sheet even allows it to envision ?something a little bit ...
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1-800 Contacts Delays Sale Of Clearlab While It Consolidates
1-800 Contacts will endure about $7.1-8.7 million in costs when it folds Clearlab's contact lens plant in the UK into its operations in Singapore. Both the UK and Singapore operations were operating at half capacity, the company said, and ClearLab has been losing money. The operation in the UK should ...
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Luxottica Aims At €5 Billion In Sales This Year, Predicting Slightly Slower Growth
Luxottica expects its revenues to increase to €4.9-5.0 billion in 2007 from the €4,676 million booked last year as the company continues to expand its international reach. However, the chance of reaching such a milestone is overshadowed by the fact that the group will experience a certain slowdown in ...
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Stylemark Acquires Polaroid Eyewear
StyleMark is a large U.S. firm that sells sunglasses and other products under some 20 brand names like Nine West, Disney, Speedo, Ocean Pacific and Revlon, but mostly in the USA. The company has bought Polaroid Eyewear International, the eyewear division of Polaroid Corporation, positioned in a higher segment of ...
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Luxottica Enters South Africa, While Boosting Its Other Chains
Luxottica will invest €225 million this year to expand and refurbish part of its global network of 5,700 stores. Under this program the group will open or refurbish nearly 1,000 stores, equally divided between optical and sunglass outlet. New stores will result from openings or small acquisitions outside Europe, ...
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Another Recall At Bausch & Lomb
But this one is not so bad ? people are not at risk of going blind this time. And this one will not have nearly the same impact on the company's financial performance as did the nightmarish recall of the ReNu with MoistureLoc contact lens solution last year. Bausch & ...
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Big Campaign For Ray-ban
Luxottica has announced a massive global campaign for Ray-Ban's 70-year anniversary. It kicked off on March 7 with a New York celebrity party, attended by the likes of Spike Lee, the well-known film director, and was followed up with the projection, from March 8 to March 13, of images of ...
