Latest Headlines – Page 68
-
Article
Britons and Italians ignore the benefits of sunglasses
Two recent surveys have shown that Britons and Italians have scant knowledge of the protection that sunglasses provide against damage from ultraviolet (UV) light. Surprisingly, the surveys also indicate that more inhabitants in rainy Britain wear sunglasses than those of sunny Italy, and that Italians were more ill-informed than the ...
-
Article
Russia imports more contact lenses
In 2018, Russia imported contact lenses worth $141.2 million, 4 percent more than in the previous year, according to the Russian Federal Customs Service (FCS). The country also exported contact lenses valued at $2.97 million, but it gave no information on the previous year’s export score. The biggest suppliers of ...
-
Article
Silhouette launches its own sports eyewear line as Marcolin takes over its Adidas license
The Marcolin group announced today a licensing agreement with the Adidas Group for the design, development, manufacturing and distribution of two lines of eyewear that will reach the market early next year. A spokesperson for the Italian company said that the agreement is global, but there is an apparent discrepancy ...
-
Article
Mondottica expands its management
With many new licenses and acquisitions signed in the last few years, Mondottica's 66-year-old founder, chief executive and “chief dreamer,” Michael Jardine, has decided to delegate some of his responsibilities to new top managers now that his company has reached an annual turnover of close to $100 million. Additional appointments ...
-
Article
Inspecs is due to go public
Inspecs has hired an investment broker, Peel Hunt, to advise it on an initial public offering that will possibly be held in the autumn. The transaction is still going through due diligence proceedings, but according to the British daily The Times, it could raise £60 million (€67.0m-$76.3m) and value the ...
-
Article
Essilux’ governance issue has been solved
The board and the management of EssilorLuxottica (Essilux) have returned to the task of integrating the operations of Essilor International and the Luxottica Group after resolving a serious governance issue that was threatening to shake up the relations among their key shareholders.Leonardo Del Vecchio, executive chairman of Essilux, and Hubert ...
-
Article
Safilo sells the loss-making Solstice chain
Safilo has reached an agreement to sell its loss-making U.S. retail chain, Solstice, to Fairway LLC, a U.S. company formed by a group of undisclosed investors who are said to be active in optical retailing with about 10 stores in the U.S. and Europe.The price tag is $9 million, on a cash and ...
-
Article
Safilo enjoys strong recovery in Ebitda
In the first quarter of 2019, Safilo posted a surprisingly strong recovery in profitability, indicating that the company is delivering on its pledge to cut costs. On a reported basis, the Ebitda, margin on revenues from continuing operations rose to 7.6 percent from 6.1 percent a year earlier. These other ...
-
Article
Safilo licenses David Beckham, thinking digital
The former English football player has signed a global 10-year license agreement with Safilo for the production and distribution of men's sunglasses and prescription frames under his name. The company's first David Beckham collection will be launched in January 2020. Beckham has had no previous license agreement for eyewear.The collection ...
-
Article
Steady growth and new investments at Eschenbach
The German eyewear and low-vision equipment manufacturer reported revenues of €144 million for 2018, an overall growth of 4 percent from the previous year, with a faster increase in the eyewear category. This confirms the regular progress made by Eschenbach in its revenues since it reached a level of €125 ...
-
Article
Opti will take place in Stuttgart in 2021, 2023 and 2025
The opti show – which we have previously called Opti based on our style guidelines – will move in 2021, 2023 and 2025. As announced at a press conference in Munich, it will move to Stuttgart in those odd years, as the world's leading trade show for architecture and related ...
-
Article
Spain’s Hawkers continues to invest more offline
The fast-growing Spanish eyewear and accessories group has opened its seventh store in Madrid, in the Plenilunio shopping center, and announced plans to open five more stores next month in the Canary Islands as it pursues its strategy of complementing its online services with brick-and-mortar stores. Three of the stores ...
-
Article
A €1.5m training program for Italy’s eyewear cluster
More than 100 small and big eyewear companies in the Italian eyewear manufacturing region of Veneto have organized themselves to support the development of an increasingly skilled staff through a new training program financed by private and public stakeholders.One of the reasons for the investment is a projected increase in ...
-
Article
Essilor continues striving to eliminate poor vision
Essilor and the Royal Government of Bhutan have officially launched a partnership to help eradicate poor vision in the small Asian country. The first step will consist in the delivery of 10,000 pairs of eyeglasses for use in a “Bhutan School Sight” program, organized by the Bhutan Ministry of Health.The ...
-
Article
Marchon is riding a good wave
Many of our subscribers probably feel that we have been writing too much about Luxottica and Safilo, and too little about Marchon Eyewear, the third-largest manufacturer of premium eyewear in the world. They are right, and this also applies to many other smaller firms. Of course, this is because, as ...
-
Article
Good quarter and big plans for Fielmann
Marc Fielmann, who took over the reins at the big, eponymous German retail chain from his father a few months ago, has big plans for the company, particularly in the areas of digitalization and international expansion.He is expected to be more specific in August, when he will lay out the ...
-
Article
The German optical market grows by 2.2 percent
ZVA, the German's opticians' association, reports that the German optical retail market increased by an estimated 2.2 percent to €6.26 billion in 2017, as compared to the previous year. The number of spectacles sold went up by 0.8 percent to 12.84 million. Corrective lenses went up from 38.82 million to ...
-
Article
A strong quarter at GrandVision
GrandVision is starting to benefit from efforts to integrate the businesses it acquired at the end of 2017, led by the Tesco Opticians stores in the U.K., which it has rebranded under its Vision Express banner. The French-based optical retail group posted strong results for the first quarter of this ...
-
Article
Essilux grows by 7.5%
Combining the sales results of Essilor International and of Luxottica on a pro forma basis for the first quarter ended on March 31, the new EssilorLuxottica group (Essilux) painted a generally positive picture of its situation across the world, with the possible exception of North America, and came out with ...
-
Article
Weakness in Essilor’s sunwear
A look at Essilor's various divisions in one of the charts in this issue shows a relatively good performance in all of them during the first quarter except in Sunglasses & Readers, whose sales went up by only 1.7 percent on a currency-neutral basis, reaching €200 million. Strong increases in ...
