Worldwide is a different story from the USA specifically of course. And it's been mentioned that the US makes up about 50% of Essilir's business already? and or Lux as well? It's far from a market segment that will be ignored regardless.Originally Posted by Lori
I think you will find that EssilorLuxottica would represent about 16% of the global market as described by Leonardo Del Vecchio.From what I understand, Essilux is not a monopoly because it now claims around 33% of the global market. If it acquired VSP the percentage would change to a level in which antitrust laws would apply. (?) Anyone care to verify or clarify?
In one of your post previously, you mentioned Hoya owned in Japan (or was it in all Asia?) online optical retailers. I've never heard it before; where did you learn that? Our clinic has switched to Hoya for the simple reason we were seeing the writing on the wall and thought Essilor was becoming a monster company with an endless appetite. I've said on many occasions how disappointed I am by the product selection Hoya offers in North America and can't understand why they do not offer the marvelous products Hoya Japan offers. If Hoya follows Essilor's path in the future then our options become very limited... Zeiss?
I think you are looking for EyeCity - about 240 locations
GO ZEISS NOW.
Don't make the mistake we did and put all of your eggs into Hoya's basket. They'll drop it, break all of your eggs, and then stand idly by and reassure you that they're "the ally of the ECP" as you desperately attempt to pick up the mess.
Meet the Four-Eyed, Eight-Tentacled Monopoly That is Making Your Glasses So Expensive
The following article from Forbes Magazine might just help to clear this up:
SEP 10, 2014 @ 10:25 AM 95,574 VIEWS
Meet the Four-Eyed, Eight-Tentacled Monopoly That is Making Your Glasses So Expensive
Ana Swanson
As my fellow four-eyes will know, buying new glasses can be an expensive undertaking. The fanciest frames at LensCrafters often sell for $400-500. Holding those little assemblages of glass, metal, and plastic that cost $25-50 to make in your hand, you might wonder how exactly you were roped into paying so much.
The answer is basic economics. Most frames are manufactured by a single company, named Luxottica. The Italian company makes frames and sunglasses for an amazing list of brands and stores, including:
See all about Monopoly at: ===========>
http://www.forbes.com/sites/anaswans.../#64e050a74dc8
And that's precisely what Dr. Howard Purcell did this evening on the weekly Power Hour broadcast ... I'll give him credit for one thing; he fielded some hardball questions with pivoting mastery ~ a real politician in the making.
He had the audacity to keep saying we need only look at Essilor's proven track record of ACTION in support of independents. He held Vision Source and PERC out as evidence that Essilor has repeatedly proven their loyalty to independent ECPs saying, "Essilor has made significant investments in the independent sector." Sure, that spin works because acquisitions are after all, "significant investments." It's as if Dr.Purcell thinks we have no idea that it's been the loyalty of independents to Essilor which has built their brand and brought EOA all this power.
Purcell went on to brag about how their integration of wholesale labs over the past 15 years also proves their dedication to independents, asserting that Essilor has successfully maintained strong, healthy relationships with independent wholesale labs and distributors over that time. Seriously??? Essilor’s (and Zeiss, Hoya, VSP) overwhelming acquisition of a massive segment of the wholesale market has been successful only for Essilor, and the families who made a small fortune selling to them. And who can blame them for cashing in on, in many cases, generations of hard work and personal sacrifice?
Now that they own the bulk of the wholesale market, Essilor’s aggressive tactics to take business away from the few remaining independent labs has become brazen. First it was the partnership with Luxottica to pull EyeMed work out of all but Essilor labs. Now they’ve gone to negotiating “exclusive” product options with VBA that net docs more on lenses, but force them to purchase those products from the Essilor lab network, i.e., they are maneuvering to take even more business away from family owned and operated labs. VSP is doing the same thing, but primarily with third party vision insurance contracts that require docs to use VSP One labs.
How many family owned and operated labs of any real size are actually left in the US??? Essilor has systematically acquired and/or eliminated their competitors and suppliers at ALL levels, including lens and equipment manufacturing, wholesalelabs and optical supply distribution, premium coating and treatment technologies, online ordering channels (VisionWeb) and online retail. This merger solidifies their blatant pursuit of owning and controlling a "direct to consumer" supply chain.
Anyone who doesn't perceive this as a threat might want to pay very close attention to VisionMonday's annual publication of the "TOP US RETAILERS" for 2016, which should come out in early Q2. VisionSource may actually overthrow Luxottica as the largest retail network in the business. As of 2013 (not a typo), VisionSource was already #2 in units sold, second only to WalMart; Luxottica was and remains #1 in dollars by an extremely small margin over VisionSource (as of 2015).
Based on VisionMonday's 2015 report, EOA-LUX will own well over $5 Billion in U.S. Retail $ales; WalMart will be a distant #2, with $1.7 Billion. Based on the same 2015 report, EOA-LUX will own as much of the U.S. (direct to consumer) market as Walmart plus the next five retail chains combined, including: National Vision, Costco, Visionworks, MyEyeDr/Capital Vision and U.S. Vision. Bear in mind that this does not include (either of) their online retail sales. How 'bout we all just let that sink in a while...
Last edited by Decades; 01-19-2017 at 02:07 AM. Reason: typos
"No one can help everyone,
but everyone can help someone."
-- Anonymous
If Hoya follows Essilor's path in the future then our options become very limited
Hoya jumped into the takeover race way too late, a few month ago and purchased 2 manufacturing companies.
How 'bout we all just let that sink in a while...........................
This thread has unintentionally become a collection of facts on one of the historic turning points in the optical eyeglass business.
By just looking at the amount of views it shows over the last three days it has stirred some interest and comments on world wide basis.
Whilst the news of this merger is undeniably terrible. I am hopeful that it could mark a turning point for the industry. The fact there is so much publicity presents an opportunity for smaller lens and frame manufacturers to differentiate themselves from the luxottica essilor behemoth in the eyes of the consumer.
The success of dollar shave club shows the potential for the plucky underdog to challenger a massive incumbent and hopefully warby and parker among others will achieve the same.
Most probably Warby Parker and Zenni right now the most popular .....................
Hi Simon, ...........Thank you for your post No 1, and welcome to OptiBoard.
Most probably Warby Parker and Zenni right now the most popular on-line opticals on a global basis, will be next on the list of acquisitions by the new ESSILUX.
Essilor International SA (EI) Given a €140.00 Price Target by Deutsche Bank AG Analysts
January 19th, 2017 - By Renee Jackson
Essilor International SA (EPA:EI) has been given a €140.00 ($148.94) target price by Deutsche Bank AG in a report issued on Tuesday. The firm currently has a “buy” rating on the stock.
A number of other research analysts also recently issued reports on the stock. J P Morgan Chase & Co set a €94.00 ($100.00) target price on shares of Essilor International SA and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a research report on Monday, October 24th. Jefferies Group set a €121.00 ($128.72) price objective on shares of Essilor International SA and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Tuesday, October 25th. HSBC set a €137.00 ($145.74) price objective on shares of Essilor International SA and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Wednesday, November 23rd. Independent Research GmbH set a €93.00 ($98.94) price objective on shares of Essilor International SA and gave the stock a “sell” rating in a research report on Wednesday, November 23rd. Finally, Kepler Capital Markets set a €140.00 ($148.94) price objective on shares of Essilor International SA and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Monday. One research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, three have assigned a hold rating and eight have assigned a buy rating to the company. The company currently has a consensus rating of “Buy” and an average target price of €117.00 ($124.47).
see all of it: ==========>
https://www.thecerbatgem.com/2017/01...-analysts.html
So if you would have owned some Essilor stock you would have been 25% richer towards the end of this week.
Another alt-VSP would pop up and already has in many states
Only the scraps are left for Hoya now...they've been missing the boat for years.
Anyone who knows the real lay of the land in optician world will see that article for what it is.
Garbage. Fake news.
So, extrapolate: we are reading garbage day in/day out.
Disconcerting, isn't it?
Purcell is a paid shill/hack.
I've talked to him.
He'll say whatever he gets paid to say.
He's dead to me.
Decades: tough question for you.
In this day and age, if you are a lab owner and "Essilux" waves 2 million dollars in your face, are you going to say no?
Are you going to pass on your business to the kids, when the giant predator can stamp them out by taking millions of customers off the "free" market via EyeMed?
You're right about this, the media often skews the truth. It's a sad truth.
LOL a Zenni ad pops up on that article's webpage. And that's all you need to know. Except that Forbes Magazine is junk, apparently.
Also LOL...the article includes a chart from "Wikipedia". Great source, Forbes.
What a freaking idiot.
How about talking to someone that knows what's really going on? Shouldn't be hard.
Heck, log on here.
Meet the Four-Eyed, Eight-Tentacled Monopoly That is Making Your Glasses So Expensive
As my fellow four-eyes will know, buying new glasses can be an expensive undertaking. The fanciest frames at LensCrafters often sell for $400-500. Holding those little assemblages of glass, metal, and plastic that cost $25-50 to make in your hand, you might wonder how exactly you were roped into paying so much.
The answer is basic economics. Most frames are manufactured by a single company, named Luxottica. The Italian company makes frames and sunglasses for an amazing list of brands and stores, including:
Prada
Chanel
Dolce & Gabbana
Versace
Burberry
Ralph Lauren
Tiffany
Bulgari
Vogue
Persol
Coach
DKNY
Rayban
Oakley
Sunglasses Hut
LensCrafters
Oliver Peoples
Pearle Vision
Target Optical
Sears Optical
The company also makes Google Glass – though 79-year-old Luxottica founder Leonardo Del Vecchio recently commented that he’d be embarrassed to wear the Google eyewear outside of a disco, and that his disco days are over.
Meet the four-eyed, eight-tentacled monopoly that is making your eyeglasses so darned expensive. Luxottica estimates that at least half a billion people around the world are currently wearing their glasses. I don’t know about you, but I am pushing them up my nose right now.
Luxottica controls 80% of the major brands in the $28 billion global eyeglasses industry. This monopolistic structure of the market leads to profits that are “relatively obscene,” says Tim Wu, a professor of law at Columbia University and the author of The Master Switch. In a speech given at this year's annual conference for New America, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, Wu remarks that products in some industries seem to only get better and cheaper -- laptops, for example -- while other products, like eyeglasses, remain strangely pricey, with only superficial innovation.
The difference is due to market structure. Because it controls so many prominent brands and retail chains, Luxottica is what economists call a price maker. That means it can set the price of its goods near the highest amount that consumers would be willing to pay for them, unlike more competitive industries, in which competition both encourages constant innovation and forces the price of goods down toward what they cost to manufacture. Having control over the pricing of a huge variety of different brands means Luxottica can also carefully engineer the prices of different brands to encourage you to shell out an additional $80 for that beloved logo or streak of Tiffany blue.
In certain industries, monopolies can be appropriate and natural – the power sector, for example, where it costs less for one company to set up and run a power grid than it would for multiple companies to set up competing power grids. But monopolies have no place in a low-tech consumer product market like that for eyeglasses. In this environment, monopolies create a very cynical form of capitalism – giving consumers merely the illusion of choice rather than choice itself, and extracting a lot of money from them in the process.
The easiest way to bust a monopoly like this is for consumers to recognize that they are being overcharged and patronize competitors. Warby Parker, which is mainly an online sales room for glasses, is putting up some competition, but the atmosphere remains rarified.
Many people, Luxottica representatives included, often explain away the high price of glasses by arguing that consumers are willing to pay a lot for something they wear on their faces 15 hours a day. But even if consumers are willing to pay high prices, that doesn’t mean that they should. Prices are determined in large part by the structure of the market.
1/10/17 update: We received the following statement from a representative for Luxottica:
"We’re proud to make some of the most beautiful and highest quality eyewear in the world, but we are in no way a monopoly. In reality, the optical industry is very competitive and fragmented. Of the close to 1 billion pairs of glasses sold worldwide last year, only 93 million of them were produced by Luxottica - less than 10%. Also, there are literally thousands of eyewear brands available to consumers today and Luxottica makes eyewear for around 30 different brands, only a few of which we actually own. Even on the retail side, half of all glasses sold in the U.S. are done so by independent opticians. The other half are sold by chains including Costco, Walmart, Solstice and many other non-Luxottica brands. So yes, while we have a fantastic portfolio, it is false to say we control the market."
Ana Swanson is a Washington, D.C.-based writer, editor, and analyst who covers global economic and business trends, with a focus on China and India. Follow her on Twitter at @AnaSwanson.
DRK.....He's dead to me.......that's what Kevin O'Leary says when he's on Shark Tank. The same Kevin O'Leary that is running for the leadership of the Progressive Conservative party of Canada.
Regards,
Golfnorth
LOL a Zenni ad pops up on that article's webpage. ...............................
I did not know that "Forbes Magazine" was junk, and if it is, what counts is, how many readers they have.
When I read a regular Swiss newspaper in German, on a weekend, there are mostly "Clearly Eyeglass" ads popping
up by the dozens and they are in English.
Dont accuse the reading material, send whoever places the ads a warning not to do it anymore.
What is wrong by using a Wikipedia chart ? They are neutral and try to present facts.
Because "Wikipedia" is "edit-able" by...the Russians!
Wikipedia has sources listed (or should) at the bottom of each article so that the "facts" can be traced. Whoever wrote the article should know you only quote a direct source- not 3rd party.
Have I told you today how much I hate poly?
The marking below says:
Regulated v. Unregulated Monopoly (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
There are several aspects to antitrust law; one is whether an entity exercises "market power", which a monopoly can do ("market power" meaning it can set prices arbitrarily without being concerned about competitive pressure), but which companies that are not monopolies in terms of market share can also do. Another is whether a merger is likely to lessen competition because of vertical integration (which is the likely source of contention here). Strangely, a company can grow its own vertical integration organically without running afoul of the law - it just can't buy it.
In short, there's no level of market share that serves as a "magic number" for triggering anti-trust scrutiny - it's not that market share doesn't matter; it's just not dispositive in a deterministic way. What the regulators consider is whether the merger will give the combined entity significant "market power."
(I think I may have responded to a post that was deleted, which asserted that Essilux will only control some 30-odd percent of the market, and so wouldn't be subject to anti-trust law).
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks