All Eyewear Intelligence articles in Volume 22 No. 11+12
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News briefs
Hoya gives an update on its MiYoSmart study
Hoya Vision Care presented an update of its MiYoSmart research on children’s myopia management during the national congress of the French ophthalmologists’ association last month. The presentation, which came after three years of research in partnership with the Hong Kong Polytechnic University , largely confirmed previous results communicated ...
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PDF NewsletterEyewear Intelligence Newsletter: Vol 22 - 11+12
End of dual governance era at Essilux | EssilorLuxottica tops 2019 sales’ level in Q1, ramps up Stellest | Zeiss consumer markets up 24% in H1 | Italian exports down 26% last year | MIDO gets ready for digital edition | U.S, ecommerce drive Safilo recovery | Marcolin rebounds halfway in Q1 after a 30% sales drop last year | Essilux opens new Japanese factory | Fielmann enters Czech market | Mister Spex up double digit in 2020 | Fittingbox tripled VTOs last year | INDO to invest in the Mediterranean
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News briefs
Ditto launches a PD-measurement tool
Ditto , the U.S.-based supplier of Virtual Try-On (VTO) solutions, is launching TruePD , a new tool that calculates the pupillary distance (PD), a key information for online retail of prescription eyewear. The company’s product is said to provide PD information with a margin of error of 1 millimeter in ...
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ArticleFittingbox tripled VTOs last year
Fittingbox , the French-based supplier of eyewear virtual try-ons (VTO) and other digital services, has seen the use of its try-on service triple in 2020 to reach 54 million annual VTOs, a spectacular growth driven by new clients’ acquisitions and by the digitization of our sector and a general shift ...
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ArticlePartial sales recovery in Q1 for Marcolin
Only a few days after the publication of its annual results, the Marcolin Group relased its quarterly figures for the first quarter of the current fiscal year ending March 31, which showed a strong rebound in revenues from 2020, but falling short of recovering to pre-Covid ...
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News briefs
Specsavers takes over Canadian independent chain
Specsavers set foot in North America in March through the acquisition of the Canadian optometry chain Image Optometry , according to a recent report by Vision Monday . Image Optometry has a network of ten directly operated stores and eight franchises in the British Columbia region and currently employs ...
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News briefs
Safilo to use new sustainable sun lens material
Safilo has announced that it would start using a new and sustainable material from Evonik , a global leader in specialty chemicals and a 20-year partner of the Italian group, in its premium sun lenses starting next year. Called TROGAMID myCX eCOn , the new material is presented as ...
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ArticleLuxottica opens new Japanese factory
Luxottica Japan announced last month the opening of a new state-of-the-art factory in Fukui, the country’s cluster of eyewear frames’ manufacturers. The investment follows the acquisition of a majority stake in Fukui Megane in 2018, one of the Italian group’s suppliers for titanium and solid ...
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News briefs
Afflelou appoints former Adidas manager as CEO
The Afflelou group has appointed Alain Pourcelot as its new CEO in replacement of Tarek Hosni , who had held the position since December last year. An eyewear industry outsider, Pourcelot, comes from the sporting goods sector, where he spent 14 years working for Adidas . He worked ...
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News briefs
VSP partners with Zeiss and Hoya
VSP Global announced that it would add Carl Zeiss Vision and HOYA Vision Care lenses and treatments into its VSP Global Premier Program starting July 1, in addition to its own VSP Optics products. The decision comes after the VSP network’s doctors asked for a ...
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News briefs
Snap buys WaveOptics for $500 million
Snap , the company behind the Snapchat application, is taking over WaveOptics , a U.K.-based supplier of waveguides for smart glasses, according to a report last week by The Verge . Evan Spiegel , CEO of SNAP, later confirmed the acquisition, adding that the company had been working with ...
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News briefs
Afflelou refinances its debt
In order to refinance its debt, Alain Afflelou , the French optical retailer has reportedly emitted a new series of high-yield bonds for a total of €485 million, coming for the most part to maturation in 2026 at a rate of 4.25 percent. The company already went through a similar ...
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ArticleAcquisitions and digitization fuel New Look Vision’s growth
New Look Vision Group , the Canadian-based retail group, reported a high double-digit increase in revenues for the third consecutive quarter, confirming a quick recovery from the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. After respective growths of 17 percent and 25 percent in Q3 and Q4 in the ...
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ArticleDel Vecchio takes control of Essilux
As largely anticipated by industry observers, EssilorLuxottica ’s annual general assembly marked the end of the dual governance era and saw Leonardo Del Vecchio reinforce his control over the merged group. Implemented in 2018, the merger between two global champions in their respective segments of the ...
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News briefs
JINS’ eyewear sales up 4.5% in H1
JINS , the Japanese low-cost optical retailer, has reported a slight increase in H1 revenues to 31,634 million Japanese yen (€237.6m-$290.6m), or 0.4 percent higher than in H1 2020. Year-on-year, increases in eyewear sales of 4.0 percent and 6.2 percent, respectively, in Japan and abroad during the first half of ...
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News briefs
Paris Miki sales down 9% last year
Paris Miki Holdings , the Japanese-based optical retailer, reported Q4 revenues of 10,691 million Japanese yen (€80.3m-$98.2m), representing a slight 0.5 percent increase from Q4 2020. However, the partial recovery in the second half of the fiscal year could not offset the double-digit revenue drops in Q1 and Q2, leading ...
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ArticleMIDO presents its digital edition
Beyond the presentation of Italian exports’ figures, the purpose of the joint online press conference by ANFAO and MIDO held on May 19 was to unveil more details about the MIDO Digital Edition , the digital event that will take place from next June 5 to 7, following ...
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ArticleItalian exports down 26% in 2020
The Covid-19 pandemic put the Italian eyewear industry back seven years, as 2020 production and exports’ values dropped back to 2013 levels, according to data presented yesterday by Giovanni Vitaloni, president of ANFAO, the Italian industry association, and the MIDO trade show. Commenting on the current situation, ...
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ArticleConsumer markets supported Zeiss H1 rebound
After a slight decline of 2 percent in revenues last year, ZEISS reported a significant recovery for the first half of its current fiscal year, with total H1 sales increasing 6 percent year-on-year to €3.4 billion, or by 9 percent in constant currencies. With roughly stable revenues in the ...
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ArticleTooz launches its smart glasses for developers in Germany
Aiming to mass market smart glasses compatible with prescription lenses at the beginning of next year, tooz technologies , the joint venture founded in 2018 by ZEISS and Deutsche Telekom , is first targeting the community of IT developers in order to collect feedback and finetune ...
