All Article articles – Page 178
-
Article
Essilor Launches New Progressive Technology
Essilor has launched worldwide a new progressive geometry based on a proprietary W.A.V.E. (Wavefront Advanced Vision Enhancement) technology, starting with France, Spain, Germany and North America. The launch is being accompanied by a heavy marketing campaign, described as the largest one in the company's history. The technology, which the company ...
-
Article
Hoya Grows Strongly In Europe
Confirming a newspaper report, Hoya Vision Care says its European sales grew by 13.4 percent in the nine months ended Dec. 31 to represent 37 percent of this division of Hoya Corp., which has set out the goal of doubling its sales in the region under the management of Gerald ...
-
Article
Oakley Hires Luxottica Executive To Run European Operations
Oakley has named Giuseppe Servidori as vice president and managing director of Oakley Europe, the U.S. company's French-based subsidiary that handles France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, the Benelux and Scandinavian countries (Oakley Europe's territory doesn't include Germany or the UK, which have their own subsidiaries). The nomination reflects Oakley's intention of ...
-
Article
Luxottica Finishes The Year Strong
The industry giant reinforced its role as an optical powerhouse in the 4th quarter and in the full 2005 financial year, delivering strong results. Luxottica's operating income shot up by 39.2 percent to €145.5 million in the quarter, contributing to raise net income by 43.2 percent to €85.6 million. The ...
-
Article
Salmoiraghi Improves Further
Salmoraghi & Viganò, Italy's leading optical retail chain, further improved its results during the 1st quarter ended Dec. 31, posting a 20 percent increase in gross profit, while sales increased by 4.4 percent on a same-store basis and by 12.2 percent in absolute terms. It now has a total of ...
-
Article
More State Support For The Made In Italy Label
The Italian government is going to help small and medium-sized companies in the eyewear sector both through specific funding for promotional initiatives in international markets, and through new tax regulations for the country's system of specialized industrial districts. On the promotion side, the government will continue to provide half ...
-
Article
Optixx of Switzerland says its ixxlens+ was preferred in a...
Optixx of Switzerland says its ixxlens+ was preferred in a comparison test against the best-selling progressives by 70 percent of the customers polled. Developed with MoldSolutions, the new fully aspheric lens uses free-form mold processing technology. It is available in standard C39 and in a new material, MR20, which is ...
-
Article
Randazzo Sets The Bar At €100 Million
The Randazzo group, Italy's second-largest integrated eyewear chain, headquartered in the Sicilian city of Palermo, will have a total of 142 points of sale by the end of 2005, spread practically throughout the country, against 122 seven months ago. The recent acquisition of three mini-chains of optical retail counters located ...
-
Article
Hal Makes New Acquisitions
Exercising an option, HAL Holding has increased from 68 to 100 percent its shareholding in GrandVision, the large Paris-based holding company of GrandOptical, Générale d'Optique, Solaris, Vision Express and Visual. It has also signed a deal to acquire 94.7 percent of the shares in F-O Optika-Fotò, a large Hungarian-based chain, ...
-
Article
Coopervision Gains Market Share In All But A Couple Of Segments
The global market for soft contact lenses expanded by an estimated 10-12 percent in the first nine months of 2005, but CooperVision's sales of these products rose by only 8 percent on an organic during the 12 months ended Oct. 31, including those made by Ocular Sciences prior to its ...
-
Article
A One-man Show Won A Golden Silmo Award, Along With Some Bigger Firms
As the biggest French company in the sector, Essilor tends to get a SILMO Gold Award each time. In addition to wresting the OLA Award of Excellence for best lens design at the annual fair of the Optical Laboratories Association in the USA through its Varilux Ellipse model, it got ...
-
Article
Essilor Reshuffles Management In Europe And The Americas
Bertrand De Limé and Hubert Sagnière, two top executives of Essilor International who have been in charge of the group's operations and development in Europe and the USA lately, are being reassigned to new functions within the group, triggering some changes in the lower management. Sagnière, a Frenchman who ...
-
Article
Salmoiraghi & Vigano Turns Around
Italy's largest integrated optical retailing chain is back in the black, with net profit of €1 million for the fiscal year ended last Sept. 30, compared with a loss of €1.4 million year in the previous year. It was good score, considering that the group also invested €11.5 million during ...
-
Article
Safilo's Ipo Makes No Big Waves
Safilo's share value went beyond €5.00 on the first day of trading on Milan's stock exchange last Dec. 8, reaching the level of €5.10, but it closed at €4.92 on the same day, slightly above the original offer price of €4.90. Since then the share price has remained below €4.90, ...
-
Article
F&O Emerges As The Second-largest Buying Group In Italy
The concentration process goes on in Italy's highly fragmented optical retailing sector, where more than 70 small buying groups, some of which have only about 20 affiliated independent stores, split a small portion of the pie with a handful of integrated chains. A few days ago, two relatively large entities ...
-
Article
Leonardo Del Vecchio's Children See Their Luxottica Shares Re-distributed
The merger of two of the family holding companies that control Luxottica has allowed the company's observers to shed light on the complex web of their interests. The notification of the transaction to the watchdog of the Milan Bourse shows that Leonardo Del Vecchio himself, founder and chairman of the ...
-
Article
Sover And Visibilia Look To The East
Sover posted 15 percent growth to €18 million in the 1st half of the year. The decision made in 1993 to focus on the East European markets joint ventures with local distributors in Russia, Ukraine, the Czech Republic and Romania - has clearly proved its validity in terms of performance. ...
-
Article
Leclerc Moves Into Eyewear
E. Leclerc, one of France's largest mass merchants, has opened its first optical retail outlet on 100 square meters at Franconville, just north of Paris. It should be followed by 20 others in 2006 and grow into a network of 100 stores by 2010, located for the most part ...
-
Article
Afflelou Develops Strongly In Spain
F2L, a single company comprising numerous shareholders, is taking over the ownership of 45 optical retail stores from Alain Afflelou Optico, the company set up by Alain Afflelou to manage his expanding interests in Spain, including the optical stores that previously belonged to Carrefour. The shareholders include various Spanish and ...
-
Article
Coopervision Lowers Guidance Again
Cooper Companies has lowered for the third time its guidance on group revenues for the 4th quarter, which ended on Oct. 31, as well as for the next two fiscal years. In a conference call held with analysts on Nov. 22, which he said was the worst one in which ...
