Latest Headlines – Page 221
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Derigo's Retail Operations Help Boost The Bottomline
De Rigo reached a net profit of 27.4 billion lire (e14.2m-$12.8m) in 2000, equal to 3.1 percent of sales, as compared to only 2.7 billion lire in 1999.The main factor of this considerable progress was a sharp increase in the combined operating earnings of General Optica and Dollond & Aitchinson, ...
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Marcolin Signs The North Face And Costume National Licenses
Marcolin has signed an exclusive licensing agreement for a line of high-tech eyewear under the prestigeous The North Face label. Major synergies are expected with Cébé, the French sports eyewear company bought by Marcolin in mid-1999, and with Creative Optics, the large American wholesaler acquired a few weeks ago. Together, ...
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Italian Eyewear Exports Boom
Italian eyewear manufacturers' revenues grew by an estimated 18.7 percent last year to 3,385 billion lire (e1,748m-$1,577m), not including inter-company sales of about 1,188 billion lire (e614m-$553m). The growth stemmed mainly from a big boost in Italy's exports of sunglasses, driven by Luxottica's 1999 acquisition of Ray-Ban and the subsequent ...
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Us Company Offers Photochromic Lenses In Multiple Fashion Colors
The US firm, which changed its name recently Action Services to Invicta Corporation (no relation to the Italian outdoor company), has signed strategic agreements with a dozen small brands of fashion eyewear to draw attention to its unique line of Solera photochromic lenses through co-branding and cooperative advertising. Alan Yuster, ...
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Optima Claims Superior Polycarbonate Lenses, Sells Them Also In Europe
Optima, a pioneer in high-index thermo-set plastic lenses, plans to set up an office in France early next year to market and service its new Resolution line of polycarbonate lenses, following an order by an unnamed customer for 1.7 million pairs in the first year. Optima already has a sales ...
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Conception Doubles Sales Projections, Despite A Lawsuit By Essilor
Conception Holding, the new lens moulding and casting technology company set up by Rudolf Suter in Switzerland in 1999, is targeting sales of up to $300 million through 2005, following strong interest in its cost-effective fast-cast process by some major US chains. That's double the turnover that Conception had budgeted ...
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Loh Industrializes Lens Edging
The company's new ES-2 edging system is aimed at large optical retail chains and at lens processing laboratories, which have been using sofar technology meant for low-volume applications in individual retail shops. According to LOH, a lab can get a return on the investment if it has to process more ...
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Zephyr, France's New Joint Purchasing Entity, Has Ambitious Goals
GrandVision and Optic 2000, the joint venture partners in Zéphyr, have already started to approach major suppliers of frames and other products, yet the officials involved in this unprecedented operation will not comment for the moment on the initial results of their cooperation, or their longterm quantitative goals. Evidently, the ...
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Lens-online Has Been Successfully Launched In The Uk, And It's Now Attacking Scandinavia
Launched by three former Sola executives last Oct. 11, this new British internet-based B-to-B ophthalmic lens operation is already ahead of its targets in the UK, and it's planning to expand soon into other European countries and into other product categories. It already has nearly 300 registered users in the ...
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Fielmann Raises Its Net Profit By 18.3%
Europe's largest optical retail chain reported today an 18.3 percent increase in net income to 75.7 million DM (e38.7m-$34.6m), equal to 6.7 percent of its consolidated revenues, which rose by 11 percent to 1.13 billion DM (e578m-$517m). The bottomline benefited from a new tax-free status for its in-house lens production ...
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Essilor Shifts Focus To Profits
External growth has been put on the back-burner. Xavier Fontanet, chairman and CEO of Essilor International, has asked the group's US, European and Japanese divisions to concentrate on improving profitability, contrary to the trend of the past few years. Capital expenditures will probably fall slightly from the 158.3 million euros ...
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Ocular Sciences Has Cut A Good Deal With Essilor
The recent sale of Essilor's profitable contact lens business to Ocular Sciences for around $50 million will cause a certain fall in Essilor's overall margins, although the division accounted for only 2.5 percent of group sales. Ocular Sciences has signed a distribution agreement with Essilor to continue to market the ...
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Marcolin's Profit Margins Declined In The Past Year
Italy's 4th largest eyewear producer raised its revenues last year by 24.5 percent to 231.6 billion lire (e119.6m-$107.4m), but its net earnings increased by a mere 0.76 percent to 8 billion lire (e4m-$3.5m). The ratio of net profits to revenues thus fell from 4.3 to 3.5 percent. Gross operating profit, ...
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Safilo Launches Innovative Projects In Frames And Contact Lenses
The second-largest Italian eyewear group, which has delayed publication of its financial results after another change in the equity structure of its family holding company (see previous issue of EyeWear Intelligence), is not buying any retail operations, unlike Luxottica or De Rigo. Instead, it's investing on new technological initiatives in ...
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Charmant Sets Up Spanish Sales Subsidiary
Charmant has indefinitely shelved its previous plans to go public, in view of the very tough economic situation in Japan. On the other hand, it has decided to continue to invest on its foreign expansion by acquiring International Tecnica Optica, a small Spanish wholesaler in Madrid that was representing its ...
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Indo Names New Ceo, Starts German Operation, As Restructuring Is Over
Indo, the leading Spanish supplier of optical products, has achieved a financial turnaround following a major reorganization that has now been largely completed. The next step will be to continue to raise the share taken by export sales to 30 percent of sales in 3 years' time, as compared to ...
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German Market Blues Affect Rodenstock
Rodenstock expects a slight increase in sales and better profits for 2001. The German supplier of lenses and frames admits in a preliminary statement that its net income fell last year well below the 1999 level of 19 million DM (e9.7m-$8.7m), due to lower-than-expected sales growth and major investments on ...
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Luxottica May Be Undervalued, Yet Sunglass Drove A Hard Bargain
Luxottica's share price on the Milan stock exchange grew beyond the price of 16.83 euros of its stingy secondary offering of last November after its momentous announcement last Feb. 22 that it was going to acquire Sunglass Hut, the world's largest chain of sunglass stores, at roughly the equivalent of ...
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Filos May End Up In Chinese Hands
Rumors that had been circulating for some time have now been confirmed. As Moulin International has done with Metzler, a major unnamed Chinese group is one of the contenders vying for a sizeable chunk of Filos Group, the Italian firm, controlled by the Lozza family, that produces Benetton eyewear. The ...
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Aspesi, The Italian Airport Optical Chain, Opens On Broadway With Fiorucci
Fiorucci, the famous Italian apparel brand, is due to open a megastore on New York's Broadway in the second week of April. Of the store's 2,000 square meters, 80 meters will be devoted to an eyewear corner managed by Aspesi, an Italian optical chain specializing in sunglasses. Most of ...
