All Article articles – Page 169
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Clearlab Closes Its British Factory
ClearLab, the contact lens manufacturer bought by 1-800 Contacts from the USA several years ago, has announced the shutdown of its British plant at Estover, near Plymouth, resulting in about 100 layoffs. Its operations will be consolidated into the company's state-of-the-art plant in Singapore, but ClearLab will continue to have ...
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Cooper Struggles With Silicon Hydrogel Launch, Distribution Consolidation
The Cooper Companies' 4th quarter, ended Oct. 31, was marred by internal and external problems. The company's previously announced consolidation of its distribution in the USA and in Europe ? going from 21 distribution centers to just five ? didn't go as planned and was actually ?disastrous? for a couple ...
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One More Scandinavian Retail Group Sees The Light
The concentration process across national boundaries is accelerating in the Scandinavian retail trade, where the national markets are relatively small for the local retail groups to carry weight in their negotiations with the major suppliers. After the launch of Nordic Optical Partners and of Optical Fashion Group, which we put ...
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New Japanese Lens Introductions At Ioft
As usual, some Japanese companies used the IOFT show in Tokyo last October to introduce some new technologies, initially on the domestic Japanese market. Not all of them will make their way to Europe or the USA, or at least not right away, partly because of the increasing sophistication needed ...
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Marcolin Sets Up A Japanese Joint Venture With Optec
Marcolin has set up a joint venture for the rich and promising Japanese market with Optec, a Japanese producer of eyewear that is also a distributor and licensee of glasses under the well-known Oliver Peoples and Paul Smith brands. The announcement came after the Italian company successfully concluded a capital ...
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Salmoiraghi And Vision Service Unite Their Purchasing Power
Salmoiraghi & Vigano, Italy's largest integrated optical retail chain, and Vision Service, one of the country's major buying groups, will join forces to negotiate more favorable terms with their suppliers as from 2007. They formed at the end of last month a consortium, called Kentral, as the central purchasing structure ...
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Vidivici's Revenues And Profits Soar
VidiVici, an ebullient Italian company that is making waves in the designer segment of the eyewear market, plans to open a sales subsidiary in Miami for the U.S. market, after the recent opening of a Spanish sales branch in Barcelona. VidiVici already has a German sales subsidiary and one in ...
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Italy's Exports Rose By 18.7% In First Half
Confirming its apparent turnaround, the Italian eyewear industry clocked up significant growth in exports for the first half of 2006, particularly for its sunglasses in Europe and the USA. For the entire Italian eyewear industry, which includes lenses, cases and components, sales grew by 18.7 percent to €1,063 million. ...
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Safilo Buys A Spanish Chain, Will Launch The Banana Republic License In 2007
After several years of negotiations, probably hampered by its cost containment efforts, Safilo signed a €23 million deal last Nov. 9 to take over Loop Vision, a chain of 61 high-end optical and sunglass stores in excellent locations throughout Spain with sales expected to reach €25 million this year. Safilo's ...
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Bausch & Lomb Estimates 3rd Quarter And 9-month Results, But The Fda And The Sec Are Still Nagging
Bausch & Lomb got a warning letter last Nov. 6 from the U.S. Federal Drug Administration (FDA), alleging that it had not reported 35 cases of fusarium keratitis related to its ReNu with MoistureLoc contact lens solution. The company responded to the letter by claiming that the FDA has not ...
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Marcolin Boosts Equity By €30 Million, Brings In New Shareholder
Marcolin announced the details of a €29,835,247 capital increase that will enable the group to reinforce its balance sheet and raise funds to finance its development through the issue of 1,761,375 new shares. The company says it will use the proceeds to improve its debt/equity ratio, to finance the development ...
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De Rigo's Revenues Start To Grow Again
De Rigo closed the first half of 2006 with revenues of €295.5 million, up by 10.5 percent over the same period of last year, but they grew by only about 8 percent on a comparable basis. The group's wholesale activities and its two retail chains, General Optica in Spain and ...
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Luxottica Buys Another U.S. Chain
In an ongoing effort to reinforce its presence in North America, which has not yet come to an end, Luxottica has agreed to buy D.O.C Optics, a rather fashionable American optical retail chain that has about 100 stores located for the most part in the Midwest around Detroit, including 11 ...
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Another Fund Will Own Bushnell
Bushnell Performance Optics will probably have a new majority shareholder by next January, as Windpoint Partners, the investment fund that helped Joe Messmer to take over the first components of the group in 1999, wants to cash out. While Messmer and other individual shareholders plan to put some equity back ...
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Fukui Industry Asks For Government Help To Improve Work Flows
Similar to the industrial clusters of Belluno in Italy and Oyonnax and Morez in France, the area of Fukui, which represents about 95 percent of Japan's eyewear production, is fighting hard to compete against the large integrated Italian producers and the cheap factories in China. Only a few specialists have ...
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New Optical Fashion Group Has Been Formed In The Nordic Countries
An article published in the previous issue of EyeWear Intelligence about the new Nordic Optical Alliance reported incorrectly that the Swedish-based Synsam chain has bought Profil Optik in Denmark. Instead Synsam and Profil Optik, which are both buying and marketing groups, have formed a joint wholesale company, Optical Fashion Group, ...
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Zeiss Gives A Big Push To Its Sun Lenses
Rebaptized as Carl Zeiss Vision Sunlens, the former SOLA Sunlens is eyeing a major increase in its turnover through a two-pronged dual-brand attack on the market. The higher end will be serviced under the highly trusted Zeiss brand name, while the company's presence in the medium and lower segments of ...
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Marcolin Books Second Quarterly Operating Profits
Marcolin booked a second consecutive quarterly operating profit in the 3rd quarter, ended Sept. 30, as the group continues its restructuring efforts and to overcome last year's loss of the Dolce & Gabbana licence. Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) were a positive €1,219 million in the quarter, ...
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Carl Zeiss Vision Continues The Integration Process In Europe
The process of integrating the former operations of SOLA International and its American Optical subsidiary with those of Carl Zeiss' ophthalmic products division has been virtually completed in Europe under the management of Rudi Spiller. The integration process has been implemented rather quickly and effectively in France, where Eric ...
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Clearlab Is Up For Sale
Numerous potential buyers have expressed interest in ClearLab, the European manufacturing arm of 1-800 Contacts, and the company expects to announce details of ClearLab's separation by the end of March 2007. No potential buyers have been named yet, nor has a possible selling price been mentioned. In the 3rd ...
