Latest Headlines – Page 228
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Anfao Strikes A Deal With Marsh For Insurance Against Non-payment
Italy's eyewear manufacturers now have the means of insuring themselves against the risks of non-payment by their clients. On May 8, their trade association, Anfao, signed an agreement with Marsh, one of the major insurance brokers in the world, to get their merchandise insured from the moment they are picked ...
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Grandvision Plans To Enter The German Market, Reports An Excellent Quarter
The French optical and photo retail group, which now employs for the first time more than 10,000 employees around the world, is looking for the right country manager and for adequate sites for its first optical stores in Germany, which will be the main condition for making the big step. ...
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Pearle Buys Dutch Chain, Sells On The Internet In Germany, Is Bullish On Avanzi
A new apollo.de website in Germany will start selling directly to the final consumer on May 1 the entire range of contact lenses of Apollo Optik, the German chain of optical stores bought by Pearle Europe a couple of years ago. The unique e-commerce project has been carefully developed together ...
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French Buying Group Gets Cash Infusion For Growth
A French institutional investor, Natexis Investissement, has acquired a 32.4 percent stake in Visual, a 41-year-old buying group whose members are located primarily in the smaller towns of France. Carried out through an equity increase of 20 million FF (e3m), the acquisition will help obtain enough financing to set up ...
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Iga Optic Raises Its Turnover By 17%
All three main segments of the German buying cooperative's business ? central settlements, private label programs and the sale of advertising and promotion services ? contributed to raise IGA Optic's turnover by 17 percent last year to 86 million DM (e44m-$48m), generating a profit that is being redistributed among the ...
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Battle Over Wesley Jessen Intensifies
Bausch & Lomb has extended until May 12 the deadline for acceptance of a hostile tender offer of $34 a share for Wesley Jessen, which values the US supplier of colored contact lenses at $666 million. Wesley Jessen's board firmly rejected B&L's offer on March 30. On Apr. 24, it ...
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Signet Armorlite Comes Under New Ownership
Control of Signet Armorlite has shifted to a new company, based in Milan, that is majority owned by 3 unnamed Italian industrialists, in a refinancing deal that has injected 17 billion lire (e 8.7m-$8.9m) in new equity. The new company, called Signet Armorlite SpA, has a 70 percent stake in ...
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Hoya Acquires Us Lab Network, Reports Mixed Results
Essilor International already has an estimated 22-23 percent market share at the wholesale prescription laboratory level in the USA, and wants to raise it to 30 percent, in connection with a new global service-oriented, internet-based strategy. Following the policy initiated by Essilor to conquer the world's largest eyewear market, Hoya ...
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Essilor Banks On Branding, Service And Internet To Sustain Annual 10% Growth
Essilor International plans to set up and operate relatively open continental internet portals in North America, Europe and Asia over the next few years to sell its own lenses and their features as ?custom-made? and ?ready-made? products to the opticians and to their customers, involving also other major web operators ...
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Vision-ease Makes Investments On Polycarbonate Lenses In Europe
Polycarbonate lenses probably represent about 25 percent of the US ophthalmic lens market, and they may grow to 40 percent of the market in 2001, according to Vision-Ease officials. Anticipating that polycarbonate lenses will represent between 5-10 percent of the European market within 3-4 years, BMC Vision-Ease Lens has started ...
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Jeremy Bishop Is Sola's New Ceo
While some analysts expect the company to be sold, other industry observers expect a closer integration between Sola International and American Optical, the company acquired by Sola 4 years ago, following the appointment one month ago of Jeremy Bishop as Sola's new CEO, replacing John Heine, who had announced his ...
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Marchon Sets Up Japanese Subsidiary
Marchon had virtually no presence before in the large brand-conscious Japanese market. Combined with with a very promising manufacturing and distribution contract with Nike and Marchon's recent acquisition of the important Nautica and Donna Karan licenses - the latter previously handled by Lantis Eyewear - the establishment of a wholly-owned ...
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Safilo Sets Up Portuguese Sales Office, Gets Spade License, Loses Its Own Cfo
The large Italian eyewear group, which established its own Japanese sales subsidiary last year, continues to expand its own direct sales network. Safilo's new Portuguese sales office started up at the beginning of April. It will be managed from the company's Spanish sales subsidiary in Madrid, which is centralizing all ...
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Silhouette's New Marketing Packages For Opticians Get A Global Roll-out
A recent survey showed that the opticians who have adopted Silhouette's new marketing packages in Germany experienced an average sales increase of 54 percent last year, as compared to 10-12 percent for non-participants. About one-third of the 1,500 German dealers of the Austrian firm have adopted them sofar, and the ...
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Zeiss And Menrad Cooperate On Frames
The German Ferdinand Menrad Group, which had been manufacturing some of Carl Zeiss' frames as far back as the 1920s, has acquired all the production and logistics operations of the Zeiss eyeglass frames business, including a factory in Hungary. Menrad will assume overall sales responsibility for Zeiss' high-end line of ...
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Rodenstock Takes The Porsche Design License From Luxottica
Luxottica had inherited the Porsche Design eyewear license through its acquisition of Ray-Ban, which had held it for many years, developing mainly in the sunwear segment of the market. Rodenstock and Porsche Design Management in Salzburg have now announced that Germany's largest manufacturer of eyeglasses will take over the worldwide ...
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Profitable Logo Looks For Acquisitions
The acquisition of a sunwear company would be a welcome diversification for this large French eyewear firm, a bit like Marcolin's recent takeover of France's Cébé. At the same time, Logo Paris is looking at investments outside France that would help it to take a stronger foothold in certain foreign ...
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Oakley Makes Big Strides In Quarter
The company's net income jumped by 293 percent to $5,472,000 in the 1st quarter ended March 31. Total sales grew by 30 percent to a record $63,086,000, driven primarily by higher eyewear sales, with overall increases of 18 percent in the USA and 46 percent in the rest of the ...
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Alain Mikli Eyes New Store Concept For A September Debut In Düsseldorf
After 22 years in business, the French non-conformist of the optical world feels that the biggest challenges are still ahead of him. He has no desire to take his private company public, nor to be a giant, but concedes that the firm is too big to work as it has ...
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Pro-laser Completes Secondary Offering, Works Through Loh
The innovative Israeli developer and supplier of lens manufacturing, finishing and inspection equipment has concluded a worldwide distribution agreement with Loh Optical Machinery of Germany for its own industrial product range. The deal, which excludes some strategic clients that deal directly with Pro-Laser already, calls for a minimum purchase quota ...
