Latest Headlines – Page 177
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North America Takes Over As The Largest Market For Essilor
North America surpassed Europe as Essilor's largest market in the 1st quarter, ended March 31, as revenues in the region grew by 29.5 percent to €309.1 million, thanks in part to a stronger dollar. In Europe, instead, the group's sales role by 11.5 percent to €300.0 million. They grew by ...
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Hoya Improves Margins
Hoya Corp. reached a 19.5 percent operating margin (EBIT) in the vision care segment during the year ended March 31, up from 18.0 percent in the previous financial year, as sales grew by 10.0 percent to 104.5 billion yen (€730m-$923m). The Japanese company reached this score in spite of considerable ...
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Swank Goes Under New Management
Swank International Manufacturing has appointed Dicky Kawai Tong as its new CEO and Teresa Chan as its new marketing and communications manager. Both executives come from the bankrupt Moulin Global Eyecare Holdings. Tong spent 11 years at Moulin, rising to the post of vice president and executive director. Indicating that ...
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Metzler Goes Bankrupt In Italy And The Usa
The British and German Metzler subsidiaries of the bankrupt Moulin Global Eyecare Holdings have already gone bankrupt, as we have already reported, and the German one has been taken over by an investment company along with its licenses. A few days ago, a Venice court declared the final bankruptcy of ...
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Orange 21 Sees Europe As Its Biggest Future Market Abroad
Some of the woes experienced by the parent of Spy Optics in its first year as a public company had to do with delivery problems and other kinds of troubles outside the USA, but still the American company's sales in Europe rose by 37 percent during the year. Sales grew ...
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Eye Infection Takes Toll On Bausch & Lomb' Sales
In the midst of an ongoing investigation into possible links between Bausch & Lomb's ReNu solution with MoistureLoc and an infection that could cause blindness, several reports in consumer publications have prompted large retailers in the USA like Wal-Mart and Walgreens to pull some or all of the company's ReNu ...
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D&A Partners With A Supermarket Chain For Online Contact Lenses
Dollond & Aitchison is partnering with Sainsbury's, the British supermarket chain, to offer an online service for contact lenses. Through the new service, customers will be able to order a range of contact lenses for direct delivery and obtain new prescriptions from their existing opticians or through one of D&A's ...
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Fielmann Will Expand Further In The German-speaking World
The giant German retailer wants to set up 120-140 more stores in Germany over the next few years, although it already claims a market share of 53 percent in its home market in terms of volume and a share of 28 percent in value. The expansion will take place mainly ...
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Austrians Run A Camera-like Promotion
Austrian opticians have launched a new awareness campaign, using television, radio and billboards, that pictures the eye as a high-tech life-time organ with a resolution of 130 million pixels, an auto-focus system and self-cleaning lenses. Run under the tagline ?Überlassen Sie Ihre Augen nicht einfach irgendeiner Brille,? (= Don't trust ...
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Boots Opticians May Be Turning Around
Boots Opticians plans to increase the number of its franchised doors from eight to 20 in the near future. Meanwhile, preliminary figures suggest that the management integration of Boots Opticians into that of the Boots the Chemists drugstores started to pay off for the UK-based optical retail chain in the ...
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Plimsoll Analyzes Uk Market
Plimsoll Publishing has analyzed the financial performances of the top 1,000 optical companies in the UK over the last four years and presented it in a 1,260 page report. In one of the findings, 22 percent of the companies analyzed over a recent 12-month period were in financial danger and ...
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Guildinvest Outpaces The French Market
Krys and the other banners affiliated with the French buying group raised their combined sales by 5.1 percent in the optical retailing sector, with a same-store increase of 3.2 percent. They performed better than the national market, which grew by between 1.5 and 2.7 percent according to different polls, with ...
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New European Standard Measures The Nickel Risk More Efficiently
Manufacturers of eyewear for the European market now have a final technical reference to measure the risk of nickel release on the skin. CEN, the agency of the European Union that defines safety standards for goods circulating within the European Union, has designated a specific simulation method, based on corrosion, ...
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Satisloh Partners With 3m And Prepares Product Introductions For Mido
Satisloh North America has entered a distribution agreement with 3M under which it will distribute its 3M Leap III finishing pads as well as its 3M Surface Saver tape products. The 3M products are intended to complement the Weco finishing equipment that Satisloh recently began distributing to optical laboratories in ...
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Singapore Firm Introduces Vision Correction Software
A company that says it stems from about 20 years of research is ready to enter the global optical market with a patented software training program that claims to correct certain eye deficiencies like presbyopia, delaying the need for reading glasses. The company, called Neurovision, plans to spend an additional ...
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Profit Falls For Advanced Medical Optics
A pre-tax charge of $35.2 million related to repositioning initiatives pulled down Advanced Medical Optics' net income to $2,600,000, as compared to $13,800,000 in the year-ago period. Total sales rose by 23.7 percent to $238.2 million. Sales of eye care products dropped by 23 percent to $56.8 million, with a ...
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Vision Expo's Attendance Is Analyzed
The recent Vision Expo East fair in New York was apparently well-attended, against the backdrop of a relatively buoyant U.S. market, although the attendance figures are still being compiled. Visitors indicated that it was easy to navigate, but their motivations seemed to go beyond the purpose of placing orders and ...
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Charmant Gets The Puma License
We had heard that Luxottica was going to get the coveted eyewear license for Puma, which has become over the last few years the world's leading sports lifestyle brand. In the end, the global license has gone to Charmant, the Japanese giant, but Luxottica is part of the deal as ...
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Earnings Grow, But Same-store Sales Decline In Hal's Retail Network
On a same-store basis, the sales of the optical stores controlled by HAL Holding decreased by 0.5 percent in 2005. The company would not provide any breakdown, but it seems that much of the decline was accounted for by Apollo Optik, which continued to suffer from the German health reform. ...
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Margins Decline At Safilo
Excluding non-recurring expenses, Safilo's operating margins improved in 2005, and the net profit increased by 21.1 percent to €22.9 million. However, before these extraordinary expenses, which included the charges related to its recent initial public offering, the bottom line showed a net profit after minority interests of only €3.1 million ...
