All Article articles – Page 223
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Bausch & Lomb Buys French Chauvin Labs
Based in Montpellier, Groupe Chauvin is the largest French supplier of opthalmic products, with its own operations also in Belgium, Switzerland, Germany and the UK. It took over recently Smith & Nephew's opthalmic division in the UK, Ankerpharm in Germany and Opsia, a French supplier of intra-ocular implants. These acquisitions ...
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Oakley Enjoys A Boom
Oakley's quarterly sales reached the magic level of $100 million - $100,013,000 to be precise - for the first time in its history in the 3-month period ended June 30. That was 39 percent more than in the comparable period a year ago, with sales increases of 38 percent in ...
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Vittorio Tabacchi Regains The Top Post At Booming Safilo
Members of the Tabacchi family have reached a new consensus on their respective shareholdings in Fimit, the holding company that controls 60 percent of Safilo. Consequently, Safilo's board of directors has reconfirmed Vittorio Tabacchi as president of the Italian company. Vittorio had resigned from the top post in mid-May to ...
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Sola Continues To Grow Fast In Europe
Increased sales and marketing efforts, combined with strong sales of polycarbonate lenses, AO Compact and other new products, helped to generate sales increases of 20.8 percent in Europe and 25.8 percent in other regions outside North America in the company's first quarter, ended June 30. Instead, North American sales dropped ...
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Luxottica's Results Rise Even Faster
The integration of Ray-Ban has been completed ahead of schedule, and the market's positive response to the brand's new sales strategy has been quicker than expected, allowing Luxottica to improve its results sharply n the first 6 months of 2000. The group's turnover soared by 40.6 percent to 2,433.9 billion ...
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Optic 2000 Gets A New Chairman And Certification Of Its Schooling Efforts
The members of the French buying group, which may soon have a German partner, have elected Philippe Viot, an Optic 2000 optician in Toulon, as its chairman. He replaces Jim Hatchiguian, an optician in Beauvais who happens to be the brother Joseph Hatchiguian, CEO of Pouilloux, the famous eyewear licensee ...
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Ciba Vision Agrees To Acquire Wesley Jessen, Upstaging Bausch & Lomb
If completed, the takeover of Wesley Jessen VisionCare will place CIBA Vision Corp. in the number two spot in the global contact lens market, with combined 1999 sales of $1.4 billion and a staff of 8,900 persons in this sector. Wesley Jessen's board of directors has unanimously approved CIBA Vision's ...
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Alain Afflelou Plans To Annex Lissac
Alain Afflelou plans to acquire one of its competitors, Les Frères Lissac, forming a nationwide chain of about 600 outlets, mostly franchised. The details of the merger should be announced later this month, but it seems that Afflelou will get a controlling stake in Lissac through an equity increase, partly ...
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Contemplating International Alliances, La Guilde Forms A New Holding Company
With 14 percent of the French market through its three banners ? Krys, Vision Plus and Vision Originale ? La Guilde des Lunetiers sees little room for expansion at the national level, except through the enlargement of its 860 affiliated optical stores, which have a combined surface of about 50,000 ...
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Arts Optical Forms A Joint Venture For Reyner's Stepper Brand
Arts Optical of Hong Kong has formed a joint venture with Rayner & Keeler, a British chain of optical shops and a supplier of intraocular lenses, to get Rayner's Stepper line of plastic injection-moulded eyewear frames made in China and marketed worldwide, starting in the 2nd half of this year, ...
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Oakley Works Direct In Austria, Germany
Oakley has taken over the distribution in Austria from Wulf Sport, which represented the brand there since 1996. Wulf continues to distribute Oakley products in Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia and other Eastern European countries. Oakley has also opened its own sales office in Germany, a market which was being handled ...
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Sunglass Hut Boosts European Marketing
Sunglass Hut Europe, which is now profitable, has appointed two marketing executives at its headquarters in the UK. Vanessa Griffiths, who has a direct marketing and advertising background, has joined as head of external marketing, to generate as much publicity as possible for its growing store network and for its ...
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Boots Invests On Systems And Promotion
Boots Opticians is introducing Boots Prismig, a lighter and clearer spectacle lens that it will be able to produce in-store more rapidly than by traditional methods, offering it in single vision, bifocal and multifocal designs. The British optical chain is installing the related lens crafting equipment at 150 stores by ...
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Luxottica Concentrates On Sunglasses
The world's leading eyewear manufacturer, which achieved a net profit margin of 11 percent in the the 1st quarter, is looking for new areas of development in this particularly profitable phase. It has chosen the sunglass sector, considering that, like laser-based eye correction technologies, it still has an enormous potential ...
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Safilo Improves Logistics, And Its Management Crisis Could Be Over Soon
The management crisis at Safilo is almost finished now, according to certain sources, but the details are not clear yet. In spite of the ongoing uncertainty, it's business as usual at the company. Giannino Lorenzon, the CEO, is supervising preparations for the fall sales campaign and the establishment of Safilo's ...
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Grandvision Grows Rapidly And Plans To Open New Flagship Stores
The integrated French optical and photo retailing group will soon generate more revenues outside France than inside. In the 1st half ended June 30, GrandVision's sales in France grew by 8.5 percent to 239 million euros, with increases of 9 percent for its optical stores and 7.5 percent for its ...
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Rodenstock Gets The Reebok License
The heavily design-oriented German firm, which had snatched away a few weeks ago the Porsche eyewear license previously held by Ray-Ban, announced last week a global license for sun, sports and corrective eyewear under the Reebok trademark. Rodenstock will replace after Dec. 31 Lantis Eyewear of the USA, which had ...
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Koefoed Runs Nordic Optical Partners
Jesper Koefoed has been promoted as managing director of Optik Danmark and of Nordic Optical Partners, the Scandinavian federation of national buying cooperatives to which the 1-year-old Danish grouping belongs. As previously planned, he takes over these responsibilities from Jan Herrig, whom he had assisted as buying director for both ...
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Filos Increases Its Turnover By 15%
Filos Group, the company through which the Lozza and Benetton families operate on the eyewear market, raised its turnover last year by 15 percent to around 120 billion lire (e60m-$60m). The results fell below the management's expectations, due to political and economic problems in South America and delays in the ...
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Fielmann Abolishes Preference Shares, Moves Into The Netherlands
Fielmann's stockmarket value has increased by 30 percent sofar this year. Half of the increase took place after an announcement last May 4 that the 8 million preferential shares owned by the Fielmann family will be converted into ordinary shares, removing the privileges attached to them. After the change, which ...
