Latest Headlines – Page 147
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Safilo Sells Stores To Hal, Reaches Debt Deal With Banks
As expected, Safilo has sold some of its non-core retail activities to Hal Holding for €13.7 million and reached an agreement with its creditor banks to reschedule for six months debt payments due at the end of 2009. Safilo has the right to repurchase the activities at a similar conditions ...
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Mondottica Appoints Industry Veterans In Europe And The U.S.
Mondottica, an international eyewear company based in Hong Kong that licenses brand names such as Lulu Guinness, Pepe Jeans and Ted Baker, has conducted an equity increase that has opened the way for a new minority investor, Bernard Nuesser, who is taking up the new position of chief executive. Based ...
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Sover Distributes Viva's Gant Line In Italy
Gant eyewear by Viva International will be distributed in Italy by Sover, an Italian firm based in Belluno that produces and distributes various company-owned labels and licensed brands on the domestic and international markets, including Alviero Martini and Mariella Burani. Sover expects to win over at least 750 new clients ...
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Visibilia Goes Into Liquidation
Visibilia SpA has gone into liquidation and the judge in charge of the proceedings has begun by guaranteeing that the company's 49 employees, some of whom have has been benefitting from a state protection system since July, will receive their severance pay. The employees not receiving state assistance were paid ...
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Small Producers Want ?Made In Italy' Law To Be Extended To Eyewear
An association of 260 small manufacturing companies based in northeast Italy have come out in support of a draft bill on origin labeling being discussed in the Italian Parliament that would make it mandatory to use the «Made in Italy» label on certain products manufactured in the country. The bill ...
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German Manufacturers Enjoy Domestic Business, But Record Weak Exports
At the Opti show in Munich, Josef May, managing director of Silhouette Germany and head of the national manufacturers' association, Spectaris, presented satisfactory figures for 2009. Overall, German eyewear producers suffered a small decline in sales of about 2 percent to €3.69 billion last year, but May expects increases of ...
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Essilor Buys Fgx International6
Hubert Sagnières, the former chief executive of Essilor of America who is being promoted from chief operating officer to CEO of the whole group on Jan. 1, had several explanations for Essilor International's rather unexpected diversification into readers through its acquisition of FGX International, the North American leader in this ...
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Alain Mikli Acquires Vuarnet Sunwear
The recently refinanced Alain Mikli International has acquired a 75 percent stake in Sporoptic Pouilloux, the licensee for the once famous sunglasses that bear the name of a former French Olympic ski champion, Jean Vuarnet, who won the 1960 Winter Olympic Games in Squaw Valley. The 75-year-old Joseph Hatchiguian, who ...
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Closing The Deal With Hal, Safilo Wins The Tommy Hilfiger License
Safilo unexpectedly announced that it had signed a five-year license agreement with Tommy Hilfiger Group., taking over from the U.S.-based Viva International group. The deal is valid until 2015, with the possibility to extend it for a further five years. It covers the design, production and distribution of prescription frames ...
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Eschenbach Buys Tura In The U.S.
Germany's Eschenbach Group has bought Tura, an American company that markets its own lines in the U.S. in addition to territorial licenses for the brands Ted Baker, Lulu Guinness, Tourneau and Goldfinch. Terms of the merger deal have been kept confidential. Coupled with Eschenbach's acquisition of International Eyewear of ...
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Coopervision Performs Better Than Expected And Better Than The Market
In the first nine months of the 2009 calendar year, CooperVision didn't fare too badly against the global soft contact lens market as compiled by the Contact Lens Institute, a market research group. The market for soft contact lenses grew by 3.1 percent in the nine months, accelerating to 4 ...
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Mister Optik Expands Its Retail Network Through Franchises In Italy, Abroad
Mister Optik, a regional low-cost optical retail chain based in the Tuscan city of Lucca, is accelerating the development of its network of stores to cover not only the domestic market in but possibly also Italy, France, Spain, Greece and the U.K. Last year, Mister Optik sold five stores ...
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Italian Sunglasses Have Been Hard Hit By The Recession
The forecasts put out by Italian specialists confirm the decline in the eyewear market for 2009. The Databank Institute estimates that sunglasses will be hardest hit on the domestic market, down by between 10 and 20 percent, while the prescription eyewear market lost between 4 and 7 percent. Italy's ...
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Your Customized Eyewear From Texas
«Design your own handmade eyewear» is the slogan of Randy Barnett, an American with an original set-up in Abilene, Texas, called Indivijual Custom Eyewear. The idea is based on the fact that no two faces are identical ? the proportions between the various parts of the face, the distance between ...
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Hal Agrees To Refinance Safilo, After Obtaining 50.99% Of Its High-yield Bonds
By its newly extended deadline at 5 PM yesterday, Hal Holding, the investment company that controls GrandVision and Pearle Europe, had received 50.99 percent of Safilo's high-yield bond in a public tender that had met the resistance of the bondholders because of the lower price being offered. The ...
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Deteriorating Results At Safilo
Separately, Safilo released third-quarter results showing that its sales dropped by 7.1 percent to €212.6 million, underperforming especially in Asia and in prescription frames. At stable currency rates, the decline reached 7.7 percent. Safilo ended the quarter with a 79.1 percent drop in Ebitda (operating income before amortization) to ...
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Comparable Sales Go Down At Hal
Third-quarter revenues for the optical retail division of Hal Holding grew by 1.4 percent to €510 million on a 1.8 percent drop in comparable store sales in constant currencies. Operating results also declined, by 4.2 percent to €69 million. For the first nine months of the year, comparable store ...
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Fielmann Defies The Economy
The difficult economic situation did not prevent the leading German optical retailer from recording a 5 percent sales increase in the third quarter on a same-store basis in the countries where it operates, marking a major improvement over the 2 percent growth of the first half. While no recent estimates ...
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Guildinvest Changes The Rules And Grows Faster Than The Market
The French cooperative is forecasting an increase in turnover of 2.2 percent this year for the 1,380 stores that operate under its own Krys, Vision Plus, Lynx Optique, Lun's and Vision Originale banners. This is more than double the estimated 1 percent increase in the French optical market overall. After ...
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Salmoiraghi Adds Ophthalmology And Radio To Its Services
Salmoiraghi & Viganò (S&V) has refurbished its 700-square-meter location, spread over two floors, in Piazza San Babila, in the center of Milan, for a cost of more than €1 million. The format will be rolled out in other Italian cities, starting with Turin. The Milan store, designed by the ...
