All Article articles – Page 183
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Sales And Profits Fall At Boots Opticians
Boots Opticians generated sales of £182.5 million (€270.4m-$332.0m) during the financial year ended on March 31, down 8.6 percent excluding disposals, with a decline of 4.7 percent on a same-store basis. Business was described as ?difficult? during the year, and the decrease in revenues was attributed to confusion among customers ...
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Is Johnson & Johnson Going To Buy Rodenstock?
According to some well-informed sources, Johnson & Johnson has been discussing the possible acquisition of Rodenstock or of its ophthalmic lens operations, a move that would help the global leader in contact lenses to make a stronger statement in the eyeglass sector. After a lot of fine-tuning, Johnson & Johnson ...
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Hoya Vision Care Moves World Headquarters To Holland
Gerald W. Bottero, a 46-year-old American executive who was placed in charge of Hoya Vision Care in North America in June 2004, has been promoted as president of Hoya Vision Care's international operations, with effect from Apr. 1. Bottero has replaced a Japanese executive, Satoru Kuki, who has taken up ...
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Spain's Cecop Enters Italian Market
CECOP, a Spanish buying group founded in 1996, has begun to penetrate the Italian optical retail market. It has persuaded the first 60 Italian retailers to join it, mostly from the Northern part of the country. A total of 900 members with 1,100 store belong to CECOP, which began to ...
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Improving Safilo Closes Three Out Of Seven Italian Plants
Safilo presented a plan to the trade unions last month that entails the closure of three factories in order to optimize efficiencies and to reduce costs. Between 2005 and 2006 its domestic production will be concentrated on four of the seven manufacturing facilities the group currently operates in Italy. The ...
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Mazzucchelli Reorganizes Comotec
After its merger with Mazzucchelli, the Italian producer specializing in plastic components for eyewear, Comotec, the French company specializing in metal parts, has undergone a major reorganization resulting in the closure of one of its three plants. Initial protests were followed by an agreement between the management and unions that ...
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Coopervision Proceeds With The Integration Of Oci In Europe
The integration of Ocular Sciences, which was merged into CooperVision last January, is causing certain temporary disruptions in the supply chain. Combined with high inventories of Ocular's spherical contact lenses which built up in the USA prior to the merger, this has led CVI to reduce its sales forecast for ...
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Fabris Lane Divulges Its Results
Fabris Lane reported operating profit of £2,378,000 (€3.5m-$4.3m) on invoiced sales of £18,592,000 (€27.5m-$33.8m) in its latest financial year, which finished Sept. 30, 2004, but the sales figure has been adjusted to £17.542 million (€25.9m-$31.9m), and it corresponds to retail sales of about £75 million (€111m-$136m). Operating results declined by ...
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Visionix Had A Temporary Sales Drop
Visionix got a lot of interest for its VL-2000 measuring instrument at last month's MIDO fair from the rising number of opticians who are adopting free-form technology, to check that everything is all right before surfacing the lenses. The acquisition of Luneau has enabled the Israeli firm to penetrate large ...
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Eschenbach Makes Record Profits
In spite of the German health reform, Eschenbach made last year the highest profit since its foundation in 1913. The main reason, company officials say, was a series of investments made in 2003 to boost the profitability of its foreign operations, including the establishment of a US sales subsidiary for ...
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Moulin Seeks Extra Financing
The entrance of a strategic investor is one of the options being considered by Moulin International, recently renamed as Moulin Global Eyecare Holdings, following its costly acquisition last March 1 of a controlling stake in Eye Care Centers of America. Other options are the issue of rights or securities, or ...
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Satisloh Moves Into Free-form
Satisloh, the new company that came out of the merger of Satis Vacuum and Loh last Nov. 11, has entered the promising field of free-form lens generation with two competitive models, positioning itself as a strong alternative to the market leader in this specific segment, Schneider Opticmachines. In an effort ...
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But Schneider Has Things Up Its Sleeve
Schneider Opticmachines, the company that pioneered free-form high-speed surfacing of ophthalmic lenses, is planning to expand its portfolio of surfacing solutions later this year. Declining to provide any details or to comment on Satisloh's attempt to enter into free-form cutting, Gunter Schneider, president of the company, stresses that his company ...
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The German Market Fell By 31% In 2004, But There Were More Stores In Operation
The number of optical retail outlets continued to increase in Germany last year in spite of the elimination of the German government's subsidies for eyewear, which led the country's optical retailers to book a 31 percent decrease in their sales to €3,064 million, according to their trade association, ZVA. The ...
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Vision Service Acquires Interoptical, Reinforcing Its Leadership In Italy
Growing to 609 affiliated stores with annual sales of about €132 million, Vision Service boosts its #1 status as Italy's largest buying group in the sector, with a market share of 6-7 percent in optical retailing, following the takeover of Opa Invest, the company that runs the Interoptical franchise. Its ...
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Rodenstock Acquires Danish Market Leader
Rodenstock has bought out J.C. Filtenborg A/S, described as market leader in Denmark in the area of ophthalmic optics, with a market share of just under 30 percent. Giancarlo Galli, CEO of the German company, says this is the first step in an international expansion strategy that calls for organic ...
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De Rigo Improves Margins
Income from operations (Ebit) grew at De Rigo by 15.7 percent to €28.8 million in 2004, representing 5.6 percent of net sales, as compared to 4.9 percent the year before. Net income totalled €14.5 million, down 21.6 percent from the previous year, when earnings were boosted by a gain on ...
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Marcolin Will Develop A Tom Ford Line
Marcolin's stock market valuation increased by a further 16.9 percent immediately after the announcement of a new licensing deal for an eyewear collection named after Tom Ford, the former creative director of Gucci Group, who has formed a partnership with its former CEO, Domenico De Sole, to build up a ...
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Essilor Performs Well In Spite Of Poor European Sales In The Quarter
A 1.5 percent drop in European sales to €269.1 million dragged down the growth in Essilor's sales during the 1st quarter. Thanks to improvements in the USA and in all the other markets, the total turnover rose by 2.3 percent to €570.0 million from the same period a year ago, ...
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Sauflon Starts Up A New Plant In The Uk And Looks At External Growth
The British company is pursuing an acquisition strategy to help cope with rising competition from the contact lens majors. Sauflon is currently looking at a couple of prospective takeovers, but the management declines to elaborate. Following a multi-million-pound investment, Sauflon has opened a new manufacturing site in Fareham, ...
