Customer is No1 in Europes largest chain........
A very interesting description of the success in the largest optical chain in Europe:
Fielmann another optical success story:
Statistics:
Public Company
Incorporated: 1972
Employees: 6,950
Sales: DM 1.11 billion ($568.66 million) (1998)
Stock Exchanges: Frankfurt/Main
Ticker Symbol: FIE3
NAIC: 44613 Optical Goods Stores; 339115 Ophthalmic Goods Manufacturing
Company Perspectives:
Fielmann acquired market leadership with the motto `You are the customer.' Strictly customer-orientated thinking sent Fielmann to the top. Short-term profit maximization always takes a back seat to long-term business success at Fielmann. The employees of Fielmann learn to see themselves in the customer. They serve the customer as they would like to be served themselves. Fielmann staff do not suffer under the pressure of having to talk customers into buying expensive spectacles. They have the satisfying job of finding the optimum solution for each customer, independent of the price. With the result that 13 million Germans are currently wearing spectacles from Fielmann. Fielmann has repeatedly introduced totally new, consumer-friendly benefits to the sector. With its fair prices, extensive assortment, many years of guarantee, the above-average service and friendly advice, Fielmann has taken over market leadership in the German optical industry.
Company History:
Fielmann AG, based in Germany, is Europe's largest optician; more than every third pair of eyeglasses sold in Germany in 1998 carried a Fielmann label. Fielmann operates and franchises eye care retail businesses which sell vision aids of all kinds, including eyeglasses, frames and lenses, sunglasses, contact lenses, and optical accessories. More than four million eyeglasses per year are sold at the group's 451 branches, some of which are Fielmann Supercenters, in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, each of which is managed by a certified optician. Fielmann is also a leading producer and vendor of frames for the optical industry and wholesale trade with operations in Germany and France. Further afield, Fielmann frames are also sold in Holland and Denmark, and the company operates lens grinding facilities in Minsk, Belarus, and the Ukraine, as well as through a joint venture in Hong Kong. Moreover, Fielmann holds shares in Italian, French, and Japanese frame manufacturing companies.
1972: The Founder and His First Shop
Günther Fielmann, the founder of Fielmann AG, was born in 1939 in a small village in Northern Germany. As a young boy Fielmann dreamed of becoming an adventurer and revolutionary; he didn't know yet that he would truly revolutionize a whole industry as an innovative business leader. Upon graduating from high school, Fielmann wanted to become a photographer, but his father insisted on something more down to earth, suggesting he consider a career as an optician, which was also connected with light and lenses.
Fielmann later recalled that as an apprentice optician, he had a hard time getting used to organized workdays and the demands of his exacting boss. However, a newly hired optician's aide fostered Fielmann's advancement, and at the end of his apprenticeship he was awarded the highest grade possible and the title of optician's aide. During this time, Fielmann also worked as a freelance photographer for a Hamburg daily newspaper, but he eventually decided to forgo photography in order to get his master optician's certificate.
While attending professional school in Berlin, Fielmann made his living selling used cars, honing his business instincts all the while. Once he gained qualification as a state-certified optician, Fielmann traveled the world, working as an optician and salesman in Europe, the Middle and Far East, and North America. At Bausch & Lomb in Rochester, New York, he studied modern American management and marketing.
In 1972 23-year old Fielmann borrowed the money he needed to open his first store in Cuxhaven, a town in Northern Germany. At that time, opticians enjoyed a fairly secure life in Germany. Traditionally, prices for eyeglasses were kept high by opticians who charged their customers between 200 and 1,000 percent of the purchasing price, using anonymously distributed calculation guidelines throughout the industry. People without the means to afford decent and fashionable eyeglasses had the 'choice' between three frame styles each for women and men, and just two styles for children, all completely covered by German health insurance and all utilitarian and unattractive. Fielmann, who had to wear eyeglasses from the time he was 16, felt that people with low incomes were being discriminated against and decided to change this situation. From the very beginning he offered a variety of prescription glasses with plastic or metal frames for significantly lower prices. Instead of pulling different models out of hidden boxes as generations of opticians had before him, he presented all available frames openly in his store and let his customers choose them freely. In 1977 Fielmann introduced another industry novelty: a two-year warranty on his eyeglasses, including the models for children, and the warranty was later extended to three years.
1981: A Special Deal
By 1981 there were about 30 Fielmann-owned stores in Germany, and eyeglasses at Fielmann's were much cheaper than anywhere else. Economies of scale more than made up for the losses caused by lower prices. Fielmann eliminated wholesalers wherever possible and simply sold more eyeglasses than his competitors, which in turn allowed him to buy lenses and frames in bulk from Italy, France, Spain, England, the United States, and Japan.
Next, in the presence of Germany's Federal Minister of Employment, Fielmann signed a contract with the local branch of the Allgemeine Ortskrankenkasse (AOK), a German national health insurance carrier in Northern Germany. Under the contract, Fielmann agreed to provide 90 different plastic and metal frames for eyeglasses in 640 variations for top quality prescription glasses without charging more than the amount for which AOK would reimburse its customers. If Fielmann's earlier activities were warning signals for Germany's opticians, then this was their wake up call. With a wave of delivery boycotts, advertising campaigns, threats to Fielmann employees, and several dozen lawsuits, the industry tried to stop a man who seemed bent on destroying the basis of their lucrative business. Fielmann was disturbed by this wave of hostility, but refused to give up. Only two years after the first contract with the AOK was signed, Fielmann's business consisted of 76 shops with 800 employees and 177 trainees, each of them with its own profit center. Some of them were managed by independent opticians who decided to run their businesses under the Fielmann brand concept. .......................................
Contue reading: http://www.fundinguniverse.com/compa...y-History.html
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