Latest Headlines – Page 119
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Big confusion in the British trade show scene
Dawn Kime, event director of The Eye Show, cancelled its first session, which was due to be held in the Excel exhibition center of London on Feb. 12-14, less than two weeks before it was going to take place. The new fair was going to host about 100 different companies, ...
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Hans Anders introduces brands and buys a Swedish chain
Direkt Optik is a profitable Swedish chain of optical retail stores, established by the British Crown Eyeglass group back in 1992, but it has a market share of less than 4 percent with its 13 corporate stores and 22 franchises. It was also facing a problem of succession as some ...
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Luxottica deploys new growth initiatives
Luxottica continued to grow strongly in 2012 in terms of sales, and even more so in terms of profits. The management expects this pattern to be repeated for the fourth year in a row in 2013, with sales going up in the high single digits and profits moving up about ...
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Allison cuts debt, launches new lines and has a new CEO
Allison is about to start a new page in the chapter of a history that began in 1997. After a long period of restructuring, recapitalization by its owners ? Paladin Capital Partners of the Carisma Group ? and the sale of its production facilities at Volta Mantovana, the group has ...
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Italy's eyewear grows mainly in emerging markets, domestic market collapses
Italian production of prescription frames and sunglasses has continued to grow thanks to the good performance of export markets such as Germany, the U.S. and emerging countries, but the domestic market has shrunk drastically in the past five years. A full 90 percent of Italian production is currently used for ...
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Essilor and PPG reconsider Transitions joint venture
Essilor and PPG Industries have disclosed that they are currently in talks regarding the future of their joint venture, Transitions Optical, which is the biggest supplier of photochromic lenses to optical manufacturers in the world and a consolidated subsidiary of PPG.According to PPG, the outcome of the discussions with Essilor remains, at this ...
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PPG sold more optical materials lately
PPG Industries' Optical and Specialty Materials segment improved its earnings by $15 million to $68 million in the fourth quarter of 2012 as its sales rose by 5 percent to $272 million from the comparable period of 2011. Volumes grew by 6 percent thanks to higher sales of optical products, ...
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Essilor makes moves in fast-growing countries
In its bid to make its presence felt in fast-growing emerging markets, Essilor has established new partnerships in Colombia, Turkey, China and North Africa.In Colombia, the French company has signed an agreement to take a 51 percent stake in Servi Optica, one of the largest prescription laboratories in South America. ...
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Vistamax goes into bankruptcy, Indo comes out of it
Indo came out a couple of weeks ago of its voluntary bankruptcy proceedings, which began in 2010. Court authorities have endorsed an agreement with the Spanish company's creditors whereby they will forgive 50 or 80 percent of the debt, with the balance paid over a period of eight or five ...
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Prescription Eyewear: A clear online strategy in Europe
The recent takeover of LensOn by Prescription Eyewear, which we reported about in the last issue of Eyewear Intelligence, was an important step in the British company's strategy of acting as a major online retailer with a comprehensive range of optical products on an international scale, with a leadership in ...
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Coastal Contacts goes hybrid in the U.S.
The Canadian online retailer of contact lenses and prescription frames says it obtained good results from a test conducted with a chain of optical retail stores in the U.S. that agreed to conduct eye exams on some of its local customers. Without naming the chain, Coastal Contacts said it has ...
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Advice is given for online sales of contact lenses
The European Contact Lens Forum is providing guidance to vendors as well as customers on how to deal with online sales of contact lenses, which continue to grow. It has posted two new documents to its website, www.eclf.eu: a “best practice” document to help contact lens sellers give customers the best, and most ...
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Logo treads new ground
After creating a sensation with a brand-new image stand at the Silmo show in Paris last October, Logo Eyewear is gearing up to launch two new special lines of licensed eyewear at the next Mido show in Milan. The new product launches follow a major reorganization of the management structure ...
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European manufacturers focus on quality
Competition in the global marketplace, combined with difficult economic conditions at home, are pushing small and medium-sized European eyewear manufacturers to focus heavily on the quality of their products, with a marketing strategy based on the tradition of excellence for which their countries are renowned. This has been the case ...
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Made in Germany gains importance
More and more German eyewear companies are relocating their production to Europe. Quality standards and production flexibility are secured without booking large orders when manufacturing “at home.” On the other hand, the “made in Germany” label is regarded as a seal of quality, although it apparently has a bigger impact ...
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Shamir exec chosen to lead Vision Council
The Vision Council elected its newest chairman, Raana Naftalovich of Shamir Insight, at its recent annual executive summit in Florida. The executive has been active with the American organization for many years, and has been chairman of its Lens Division, Finance Committee and Statistics Committee. Taking the place of James ...
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U.S. barometer shows an optimistic December
Independent eye care professionals in the U.S. felt better about the industry in December than they did in November, but not as optimistic as they were in December 2011. The latest Optical Business Barometer from Jobson Research found that December 2012 rated a 3.7 among the businesses it surveys, compared ...
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Opti show stresses its international focus
Marchon says it is bringing over top international manager from the U.S., Italy and the Netherlands to the Opti 2013 trade show taking place in Munich from Jan. 25 to 27 because it believes that the fair will be useful for exchanging information on an international level and discussing new strategies. ...
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Interest grows in The Eye Show
The new trade show, the first to be held in London Feb. 12-14, will showcase the collections of more than 100 companies, including big names such as Marchon, Menrad, Hoya, Shamir, Coopervision, Lindberg, Cutler & Gross and William Morris London. The organizers said they had 112 exhibitors booked with 75 ...
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Luxottica takes a 36% stake in Salmoiraghi
Luxottica's investment in Salmoiraghi & Viganò, Italy's largest optical retail group with about 500 stores in the country, is said to have been engineered in such a way that the other Italian retail clients of Luxottica and its competitors, including Safilo, will somehow be shielded from the risk that it ...
