All Article articles – Page 180
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Silmo Becomes More International
The number of foreign visitors grew by 6.7 percent at last month's SILMO show, as compared to a year ago, to represent 48.7 percent of the total attendance. With the number of French visitors down by 2.6 percent, possibly connected with the start of a round of school holidays, the ...
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Ecca Bond Could Spell Trouble For Moulin
The prospectus filed for a bond issue launched by Eye Care Centers of America reveals that any sale of the bankrupt Moulin Global Eyecare Group's 56.5 percent share in the U.S. retail company would require it to immediately repay to JP Morgan Chase $165 million in senior debt and $152 ...
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Luxottica Signs Up Burberry, Will Reshuffle Its Brand Portfolio
Luxottica Group is going to drop between two and four licenses as they expire over the next few months, and add new ones, in order to improve the quality of its brand portfolio. Unconfirmed speculation points to brands such as Polo Ralph Lauren and Puma as likely to join its ...
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Hoya Vision Care Sell Its Instruments, Improves Margins
Hoya Vision Care further improved to 19.6 percent its operating margin in the quarter ended Sept. 30, compared with 17.4 percent in the year-ago period, as sales increased by 7.6 percent to 23.8 billion yen (€171.7m-$201.8m). The division's sales declined by 0.5 percent in Japan to 9.0 billion yen (€64.9m-$76.3m) ...
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De Rigo's Retail Chains Produce Mixed Results In First Nine Months
The company's net sales for the first nine months of the year dropped by 2.1 percent to €387.6 million. The result reflects a decline of 2.2 percent to €292.5 million in its retail sales. Its two retail chains, General Optica in Spain, and Dolland & Aitchison in the UK, produced ...
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Guildinvest Teams Up With Cione In Spain
Guildinvest likes to make a big announcements on the eve of the SILMO fair every year. After doing so in previous years with the annexation of the CDO buying group and with the takeover of the Lynx chain, the French parent company of Krys, Vision Plus, Vision Originale and other ...
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Clearlab Has Sharply Higher Sales
ClearLab posted sales of $6 million in its 3rd quarter ended Oct. 1, up sharply from $1.9 million in the year-ago period. The international contact lens manufacturing company, based in the UK, had an operating loss of $1.4 million in the quarter, an improvement over an operating loss of $2.1 ...
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Nanotechnologies Make Eyewear More Competitive
The Italian eyewear industry has a new high-tech solution for boosting its competitiveness. Thanks to a €1.4 million research project supported by Italian state and regional authorities, national frame producers should be able in 3 years' time to use nanotechnologies instead of the traditional galvanization process to achieve a corrosion-proof ...
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Indo Launches Highly Customized Lenses
The Spanish company has begun to deliver the first customized progressive lenses based on a new «visual strategy» developed in-house to take into account all the parameters of the individual's field of vision and of his or her visual behavior. INDO describes its new technology, called Eyemade, as a more ...
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Polinelli Sells His Factories To Spy
Riccardo Polinelli, a busy entrepreneur in the Italian sunwear sector, has agreed to sell his contract manufacturing company, LEM, to its biggest customer, Spy Optic. Orange 21, the American company that owns Spy, says it will be paying €3.3 million in cash once the deal is closed sometime before Dec. ...
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Strong Momentum For Luxottica
The highlights of the 3rd quarter include a 5.3 percent increase in same-store sales for its retail operations and organic growth of just below 20 percent in wholesale operations. The acquisition of Cole National in the USA and the addition of the Donna Karan license boosted overall scores, translating into ...
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Satisloh Is Reorganizing Operations
The group that has emerged from the merger of Satis Vacuum and Loh is centralizing its logistics in Europe, in the USA and the Asia/Pacific market. A single platform will supply all the clients with all the equipment, spare parts, consumables and other products for coating and surfacing in each ...
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Essilor Reaches A 17.8% Ebit Margin
In the longer term, Essilor International is still aiming for a range of 16-17 percent in its operating margin. However, for the 1st half ended last June 30, the world's leading supplier of ophthalmic lenses has reported a Hoya-like operating margin of 17.8 percent, up sharply from the 16.0 percent ...
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Afflelou's Same-store Sales Rise By 4.4%
The total turnover of the Alain Affelou's network of company-owned and franchised stores grew by 7.6 percent to €134.9 million in the 1st quarter ended July 31. Sales under the Alain Afflelou banner grew by 8.9 percent to €129.8 million, with increases of 8.4 percent in France, 10.7 percent in ...
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Boots Merges With Alliance Unichem
Alliance UniChem, a public British company formed in 1997 through merger of UniChem in the UK and Alliance Santé in France, operates 939 pharmacies in the UK and 311 others in other European countries. The company also distributes pharmaceutical products to over 88,000 pharmacies, hospitals and health care centers throughout ...
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Visual Global Signs Up Another Spanish Designer
An eyewear license for a Spanish fashion designer, Jesus del Pozzo, was recently signed by Visual Global, a young Spanish eyewear company, until 2009. The collection will be launched on the market in January 2006, and some of the styles will be presented at the SILMO fair in Paris later ...
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Oakley Appoints A New Ceo
Scott Olivet will leave his current post as Nike's vice president of subsidiaries and new business development to become CEO and a director at Oakley as of Oct. 10. Olivet oversaw Nike's acquisitions of the Converse, Hurley and Starter brands after he began to work for the athletics giant in ...
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Safilo Extends Armani And Gucci Deals, Goes Back To The Stock Exchange
More details are coming out about the long-expected initial public offering (IPO), which should finally take place on the Milan stock exchange at the end of 2005 or the beginning of 2006 . It is now expected to value Safilo at around €2 billion, nearly double its valuation when it ...
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Gross Margins Fall At Arts Optical
For the six months ended June 30, the Chinese company's revenues rose by 13.4 percent to HK$375.6 million (€40.3m-$48.4m), but net earnings dipped by 5.1 percent to HK$48.9 million (€5.2m-$6.3m). Gross margins dropped by five full percentage points, down to 29.2 percent, for several reasons: an increased proportion of sunglasses ...
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Safilo Stops Supplying Aspex' Franchises
Safilo and Aspex, the Canadian company renowned for its sun clips, are involved in a tug-of-war. At the end of August Aspex acquired a chain of 58 franchised optical stores in Canada, F. Farhat, of which Safilo was one of the main suppliers. Shortly after the deal was signed, Safilo ...
