LIFE: LUXOTTICA RULES

AGORDO, Italia - The gigantic glasses in front of the Luxottica Company in northern Italy mean more than you might think. They are not just a symbol of what Luxottica makes – but the symbol of one of the greatest rags to riches stories of our time.

Luxottica, Agordo, Italy 

Luxottica is the largest eyewear company in the world. It designs and produces more than 65 million pairs of glasses every year for just about every company and brand you can think of. It’s estimated that at least half a billion people a day wear glasses made by Luxottica, and that all adds up to sales worth billions of dollars each year.

In addition to making sunglasses and prescription frames for many designers including Chanel, Prada, Giorgio Armani, Dolce and Gabbana, Donna Karen and Stella McCartney they also own Lenscrafters, Sunglass Hut, Pearle Vision, Sears Optical, Target Optical and more. The company’s best-known house brands are Ray-Ban, Persol and Oakley.

 Leonardo Del Vecchio

The man who started it all is Leonardo Del Vecchio. What they say about him is that he was born in Milan, and he was born poor. When he was seven years old, Italy was in the throes of World War II and Milan was being brought to its knees by Allied bombings. He had no family except his mother, and with the city under siege was unable to care for him. She made the difficult decision to put him in an orphanage to be raised by the nuns, where he would be safe. 

When he was fourteen, Del Vecchio began working as an apprentice to a tool and die maker in Milan. His job was to assist in the production of auto parts and parts for eyeglass frames.

The Men who Make Glasses

While the auto parts didn’t interest him, what he did think about were the eyeglass frames. But unlike most people, he didn’t think of them as a necessity for improving vision, but rather as a reflection, or as an extension of a person’s personality.

His idea proved to be powerful and popular, but in order to realize his dream he needed to be not in Milan, but closer to eyewear manufacturers. He did some research and found that most of the Italian eyewear businesses were located in a town called Agordo, in the northern province of Belluno. In 1961 he moved there.    

Inside Luxottica

Along with a couple of partners, he formed a company and named it Luxottica. At first the company just produced parts for other eyeglass manufacturers, but in 1967 they began producing eyeglass frames and selling them under the Luxottica name. That proved to be such a success that four years later Luxottica stopped producing parts for other companies and began concentrating on their own line of eyewear.

The Luxottica brand did very well in the marketplace and Del Vecchio and his partners realized they were on to something big. At that point they were selling through a distribution company, but in 1974, when an opportunity to buy Scarrone, an eyeglass distribution company of their own presented itself, they signed on the dotted line.  Scarrone proved to be a good investment and by 1981 they were ready to set up their first international subsidiary in Germany. And then, in 1988, they got lucky. Luxottica struck a deal to produce sunglasses and eyeglass frames for Giorgio Armani. 

 

 Armani Glasses

The Armani deal propelled them onto the New York stock exchange. With the money they raised they began to buy other brands starting with the Italian eyewear company, Vogue. Then they bought Persol and LensCrafters. In 1999 they acquired Ray-Ban and two years after that they took control of Sunglass Hut.

They were on a roll. They expanded their retail business by acquiring OPSM, a company based in Sydney, Australia, and then they bought Pearle Vision and Cole National, one right after the other. They bought Oakley for $2.1 billion and several months they later they acquired the king of sunglasses, Erroca.

Prada Goes Glam 

In March 2014, Google started searching for an eyeglass manufacturer to partner with on a new project. They finally settled on Luxottica, admitting that in their world-wide search Luxottica was the only company they had found that had the knowhow and equipment to produce their high tech Google Glasses. Unfortunately Google Glass was not the success that Google had hoped for. But who’s to say, now that they know who to go to for the technological aspects of the project, they won’t try it again in a few years.

In many ways it is fitting that an Italian company controls 80% of the major eyewear brands in a global eyewear business worth $28 billion. After all, eyeglasses and sunglasses are as Italian as pizza and pasta. It began in 1296 with an eye weary monk in Pisa. It was his job to sit and painstakingly copying Latin texts by hand, day after day, year after year. That labor intense work no doubt prompted him to seek a solution for his sore eyes, which he did by creating the first eyeglasses. Desperation, not to mention eye fatigue, can be a great motivator.

Fit for an Emperor

And what could have been more fashionable for a fashion conscious Roman emperor like Nero than the two polished gemstones that he used to protect his eyes from the sun while watching gladiators fight to the death at Rome’s coliseum? Makes one wonder if they were royal purple amethysts or pale and elegant aquamarines to match his eyes.

Listed below are brands owned by Luxottica, including sunglasses with elegant aquamarine and royal purple lens, and an entire range of other colors as well.

HOUSE BRANDS

Alain Mikli

Arnette

Eye Safety Systems (ESS)

K&L (formerly Killer Loop)

Oakley

Oliver Peoples

Persol

Ray-Ban

Sferoflex

Vogue Eyewear

Sunglass Hut

Sunglass Hut International

LensCrafters

Pearle Vision

Sears Optical

Target Optical

OPSM

OLORI

EyeMed Vision Care

Optical Shop of Aspen

Laubman & Pank

GMO

Luxottica also makes eyewear under license for the following designer labels:

Armani

Emporio Armani

A/X – Armani Exchange

Brooks Brothers

Bulgari

Burberry

Chanel

Coach

Dolce & Gabbana

DKNY

Michael Kors

Miu Miu

Polo Ralph Lauren

Paul Smith Spectacles

Prada

Ralph

Ralph Lauren Eyewear

Tiffany & Co.

Tory Burch

Versace

Copyright© 2016 Phyllis Macchioni

LIFE: I Can See Clearly Now

SARONNO, Italy - I friend of mine broke his glasses the other day. He had them in his pocket and sat on them. It's not the first time it's happened and it really put him in a bind. The problem is he’s nearsighted. To see anything he has to practically be on top of it which can be a problem when you have to get right in someone's face to know if you should say hello or not. He said women are particularly sensitive to this type of greeting.

Call the Fire Department

If I remember right, I think my seventh grade science teacher said that Benjamin Franklin invented eyeglasses, but she was wrong. Unfortunately nobody really knows the name of the guy who did. Some experts claim that eyeglasses were invented during the late 1200’s in Pisa by either Alessandro della Spina or Salvino Armato. It’s not clear. Others claim that Armato had absolutely nothing to do with inventing eyeglasses, it was him purely a public relations stunt his family initiated to give the guy some credibility.

In 1289, an Italian writer, Sandro di Popozo, published a Treatise on the Conduct of the Family. In it he states that eyeglasses "have recently been invented for the benefit of poor aged people whose sight has become weak.” Then he went on to say that he had the good fortune to be an early eyeglass wearer. "I am so debilitated by age that without them I would no longer be able to read or write."

Unfortunately Popozo never mentions the inventor by name. A second reference was made by an Italian friar, Giordano di Rivalto. In a sermon he preached in Florence one February morning in 1306 he said: "It is not yet twenty years since there was found the art of making eye-glasses, one of the best arts and most necessary that the world has." Maybe he sat on his glasses too.

The Friar went on to say that he had met the man who first invented and created glasses, and that he had talked to him. So how come he didn’t give us his name either? It all sounds very fishy to me. It's obvious whoever did invent “disks for the eyes” didn't realize the potential moneymaker they had on their hands. In the right place, and with the right advertising copy, it could have been a bigger marketing opportunity than the hula-hoop. But no. Glasses had the misfortune to be invented in Italy where the general thinking is if you have to advertise your product, it obviously isn't any good.

Early spectacles

By the mid-fourteenth century, Italians were calling eye disks "lentils" and for more than two hundred years eyeglasses were know as "glass lentils." It's also where the word lens comes from. One of the early problems with eyeglasses was how to keep them on. Holding two glass lentils up to your eyes would be fine if you didn't need your hands for other things like opening a door, for example. The first solution was a leather strap that tied behind the head. Variations on that theme were small circles of cord that fitted over each ear. Still others just let the spectacles slide down their nose until it came to rest against the bulbous end. My neighbor’s husband still wears his just that way. Of course he has to tilt his head way back to see anything, but life is made up of sacrifices - large and small, isn’t it?

Ancient spectacles

In the early years eyeglasses were a major status symbol, something like the two big T's of today, telefoninos and tattoos. But by the nineteenth century, when glasses became relatively inexpensive and common, wearing them became decidedly unfashionable. Women didn't want to be caught dead in them. Remember "men don't make passes at girls who wear glasses"? Glasses were only worn in private and only used in public when absolutely necessary.

The same fate should happen to the other two big T's. Unlike earlier versions that were super heavy, today, thanks to space-age materials, eyeglasses are relatively lightweight. In the beginning, frames made of bone, real tortoiseshell or ivory were so heavy that they gave people headaches. Plus the lenses were made of heavy glass, adding to the problem. So for many years people could choose between having a headache and being able to see, or being blind as a bat and no pain.

Leonardo da Vinci

Of course if everyone had listened to Leonardo da Vinci back in the sixteenth century, all these problems would have been resolved. In his Codex on the Eye he described an optical method for correcting poor vision by placing the eye against a short, water-filled tube sealed at the end with a flat lens. The water came in contact with the eyeball and refracted light rays much the way a curved lens does. Da Vinci's use of water as the best surface to touch the eye is copied today in the high water content of soft contact lenses.

Da Vinci, with his 100 percent liquid lens, was right in recognizing the psychological problem people would have with sticking something in their eye. Well none of this has really solved my friend’s problem. He will just have to wait until next week when his new glasses will be ready. Hopefully someone will be able to go with him to pick them up. I wouldn’t want him to get lost and end up wandering around streets of Saronno all alone.

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