All Article articles – Page 221

  • Article

    Italian Consumers Shop Sunglasses - Based On Quality And Looks

    2000-11-20T00:00:00Z

    About 26.3 million Italians, representing no less than 54 percent of the Italian population aged 20 to 45, wear more or less occasionally sunglasses, based on a survey conducted by the European Sunglass Association (ESA) and ANFAO, the Italian optical industry association. While the average Italian consumer spends a maximum ...

  • Article

    De Rigo Is Flat On A Comparable Basis

    2000-11-20T00:00:00Z

    De Rigo recorded a sales increase of 40.9 percent in the first 9 months of this year, reaching a level of 666.4 billion lire (e344.2m-$293.6m), but the turnover would have been flat in constant currencies and without the contribution of new operations such as General Optica, the Spanish optical chain ...

  • Article

    Boots Claims World Leadership In Progressive Contact Lenses

    2000-11-20T00:00:00Z

    Boots Opticians claims to have become the gobal leader for progressive contact lenses, selling more than any other optical chain in the world, following the launch of its private brand of Near & Far varifocal contact lenses. CIBA Vision is said to be the supplier. The British chain, which remains ...

  • Article

    Hoya Pushes The Lab Business Worldwide

    2000-11-20T00:00:00Z

    Hoya will establish more laboratories around the world. It's setting up its 5th Japanese lab in the Kyushu area. The recent establishment of various labs in Europe and the acquisition last April of ORI's labs in the USA have contributed to boost its sales in all the major areas of ...

  • Article

    Safilo Expands To Cope With Demand

    2000-11-20T00:00:00Z

    Safilo is making many new investments on the production and sales front. The Italian company, which added 500 new employees to its payroll sofar this year, is doubling the production capacity of its main factory at Longarone and opening a new one at Ormotz in Slovenia to cope with rising ...

  • Article

    Randazzo Expands In Northern Italy

    2000-11-20T00:00:00Z

    The Italian Randazzo retail group is strengthening its presence in the Northern part of the country with the opening of 2 new outlets for eyewear and contact lenses. One is located in the Città Fiera shopping mall of Udine, the other one in downtown Monza, near Milan. Recently, the chain ...

  • Article

    Marcolin Reports Higher Sales But Lower Margins

    2000-11-20T00:00:00Z

    Marcolin reports a pre-tax profit of 13,521 million lire (e7m-$6m) on revenues of 175,466 million lire (e90.6m-$77.3m) for the 9-month period ended Sept. 30, indicating a gross operating margin of 12.7 percent and a pre-tax margin of 7.9 percent. Comparable figures are not available for the same period one year ...

  • Article

    Sola Invests On Polycarbonate

    2000-11-20T00:00:00Z

    The board Sola International has set aside an investment budget of $25-30 million to help the company obtain in the next couple of years a world market share in polycarbonate ophthalmic lenses that compares with the relatively strong position that the group already enjoys with C39-based organic lenses. The first ...

  • Article

    Luxottica Nearly Doubled Its Own Net Margin To 10.1% In The Third Quarter

    2000-10-26T00:00:00Z

    The world's leading manufacturer of eyewear frames more than doubled its earnings in the 3rd quarter ended Sept. 30, reflecting mainly the effects of Ray-Ban's quick integration into group operations and of a stronger integration of LensCrafters within the group's central management structure. The group reported today a fantastic ...

  • Article

    Salmoiraghi & Vigano Has 17 New Outlets, Thanks In Part To Acquisitions

    2000-10-26T00:00:00Z

    Seven months after the management buyout of this Italian optical, Salmoiraghi & Vigano can boast a relatively good performance, backed up by a strong advertising campaign which is absorbing between 5 and 6 percent of its turnover. As previously reported, Salmoiraghi's top management team acquired a 10 percent ...

  • Article

    Safilo Achieves 30.4% Growth In Sales

    2000-10-26T00:00:00Z

    Safilo ended the 3rd quarter of 2000 with turnover up 21.5% to 280.8 billion lire (e145m-$120.2m), contributing to a still impressive 30.4 percent growth in the group's turnover in the first 9 months, which now stand at 961.7 billion lire (e496.7m-$411.8m). The net profit has increased by 32 percent in ...

  • Article

    L'amy Acquires Grasset

    2000-10-26T00:00:00Z

    L'Amy, the recently reorganized French eyewear group, has taken over a smaller competitor, Lunettes Grasset et Associés, reinforcing its leadership in France and coming closer to its corporate goal of reaching an annual turnover of at least 700 million French francs (e107m-$88m) within the next few years. The two companies ...

  • Article

    Essilor Launches High-index Lenses In Japan, Buys Back Saint-gobain's Stake

    2000-10-26T00:00:00Z

    The new joint venture between Essilor and Nikon, which should break even this year, is launching now in Japan an organic lens with an index of 1.74, the highest to have been offered sofar in the market. Manufactured at Essilor's own facilities in small quantities for the moment, the lens ...

  • Article

    Germany's Optiker-gilde Launches Its Own Banner

    2000-10-26T00:00:00Z

    The German buying group, which has 362 affiliated optical retailers, is launching a new logo and its first banner, which is expected to be adopted gradually by the majority of them in one form or another. Right now, they have no common corporate identity, although they purchase many items through ...

  • Article

    Bausch's Reorganization Goes On

    2000-10-26T00:00:00Z

    Bausch & Lomb says it plans to eliminate 100 manufacturing jobs in its contact lens operations by the end of this year, in addition to the 600 announced last December. The group also plans to eliminate about 450 more non-manufacturing jobs over the next few months, primarily in its own ...

  • Article

    Ciba Vision Raises Its Total Sales

    2000-10-26T00:00:00Z

    CIBA Vision raised its total sales by 19 percent to 1,181 million Swiss francs (e787m-$652m) in the first 9 months of this year, but only by 9 percent in local currencies. The main growth factor was the launch of Visudyne, a breakthrough treatment for age-related macular degeneration, whose sales have ...

  • Article

    Crown Eyeglass Has Gone Private

    2000-10-26T00:00:00Z

    The Lee family has taken Crown Eyeglass off from the London stock exchange, where investors are getting more and more away from low-cap firms other than internet and mobile phone start-ups. Joseph G. Lee and his son Martin B. Lee, who are respectively the managing director and the finance director ...

  • Article

    Vistakon Regionalizes European Sales And Marketing

    2000-10-26T00:00:00Z

    Johnson & Johnson's contact lens division has divided Europe into three main regions, with one manager taking on overall responsibility for sales and marketing in each one of them. They all report to Vistakon's UK-based European manager, Paul Donald, who continues to coordinate logistics and other operations. Jim Gallagher, ...

  • Article

    Oakley Reports Many Positive Figures

    2000-10-26T00:00:00Z

    One of the most interesting items from the financial report for the 3rd quarter ended Sept. 30 is the fact that sales outside the USA have broken through the $50 million mark. At $52,076,000, they almost caught up with Oakley's US turnover of $54,968,000 in the quarter, and they will ...

  • Article

    Grosfilley Gets The Girbaud License

    2000-10-26T00:00:00Z

    Signed a couple of days ago, the worldwide licensing contract for eyewear frames signed by Marithé and François Girbaud should help the French firm to find a good distributor in the USA, where the French couple of avantgarde designers is beginning to become famous again like in the 1980s, when ...