What is in the Future for the Canadian and USA Optical Retail business ????????????
With the acceptance of the European Council, to let the two worlds largest optical corporations, in the optical lens and frame manufacturing merge into one company, the last hurdle to block it has evaporated.
Both corporations have worked hard over the last many years for total control of the optical eyeglass sector on a worldwide basis, through takeovers and acquiring other manufacturers around the globe, as well as expanding into the eyeglass retail field.
With the big merger now going to be a fact, all optical professionals will have to be seriously thinking what is going to happen in the near future to the optical retail sector, and at what speed.
Both corporations are actually very active to already own and operate a good part of online and retail opticals, as opticians and optometrists.
The most visible retail area of corporate takeovers, are the oil companies.
Your small service garages with a couple of gas pumps around the block, are gone from coast to coast, and have been replaced by corporation owned service stations.
.........we will have to seriously think about it.
What are your comments now.............................
Be ready to counter that proposition..................................
Quote:
Originally Posted by [COLOR=#3E3E3E
Lab Insight[/COLOR]]
As for the little guys, the only benefits you have is you can turn your business model on a dime and change quickly to adapt - large companies are unable to alter their course quickly. And, the little guy can establish their own brand and provide a level of service that large corporations can never match.
............a perfectly fitting opinion.
The days of the conventional markup made by retail opticians forever, will soon have official competition by the 21 of the largest online opticals that will be merged into the deal.
Be ready to counter that proposition.
Even if I am to repeat myself ...........................
Even if I am to repeat myself, a possible solution will be for individual opticians to be better craftsmen than big box employees, and be able to make a good profit on service charges and not on a resale of the laboratory charges.
This should be practised already now with online purchased glasses that come straight out of production and are not fitted to the patients head.
With LensCrafters closing down their on site labs the trend will probably be something like that,
So far, I've yet to meet one that has taken their spend somewhere else...............
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Lab Insight
So far, I've yet to meet one that has taken their spend somewhere else.
.........the somewhere else are disappearing one by one.
On my optical website listing there are over 140 websites that are no more active over the last 10 years, since I have taken count of.
Just got the Del Vecchio statement ...................................
in Italian and did translation on Google........................
"We are waiting forthe green light from Chinaand then it is done, if it arrives by March, the merger will be operationalfrom May". Leonardo Del Vecchio, the day after the approval of theAmerican and European antitrust authorities to the Italo-French integration betweenLuxottica and Essilor, is visibly satisfied. Even if the procedure was long,the bet is finally winning, and the union ofthe two groups can open interesting growth spaces. "We have to gain marketshare, then synergies will come. In the last year we have pushed a little lesson growth to favor profitability ", explains the founder of the Agordogroup, which in 2017 managed to cut the milestone of one billion profit (1,038million, plus 24.7%) with a turnover approaching the 10 billion mark (9.157billion, up 2.2%). The French, for their part, have scored less dramatic butstill positive numbers and financial analysts expect that the unionof the two groups will succeed in generating synergies for 600-800 million overa period of 10 years, rationalizing production and services in markets wherepresence is
double. The Luxottica-Essilor group will invoice approximately 16.6 billion with a market capitalization that will reach almost 50 billion, 140 thousand employees and sales in 150 countries.
Read also: "Speaks Del Vecchio: In France I will be decisive with 31%. And society is not scalable "
Del Vecchio has also silenced those who announced the transaction, more than a year ago, at the umpteenth sale of an Italian company to the cousins of the Alps. Instead the opposite happened. The first shareholder of the holding company that will control the two operating companies, Luxottica and Essilor, is in fact Delfin of the Del Vecchio family with 31.4% of the shares, at a safe distance from the second shareholder, a core of employees, with 4%. And governance also ensures Italian control of operations. "I am president of the holding with all the powers - he explains - and I have a power of veto, without my consent in the company nothing is done. To put the Delfin in a minority, which will have 31.4% of the shares, it will take double, that is, 62.8% that should intervene compactly in the assembly, but I do not think that will ever happen ". To counterbalance the powers of the Italians is Hubert Sagnières, the current managing director of Essilor, who will be executive vice president in the holding.
The only concession to the French is the headquarters of the holding company, which is based in Paris, a capital where Del Vecchio is at home with important property investments in the portfolio through the Foncière des Régions, which merged with Beni Stabili. A well-tested integration model that Del Vecchio is replicating in the eyewear business, where Luxottica stands out in eyeglass frames while Essilor is a leader in lenses.
Del Vecchio on the threshold of 83 years has not intended to give up the blow and is not absolutely regretted having taken over the reins of his company, in September 2014, after a decade in which he left room for managers led by Andrea Guerra. Since he returned, in addition to Guerra, the company has left the company first Enrico Cavatorta, then Adil Mehboob-Kahn who had arrived with all the good promises from Procter & Gamble but lasted only a year, and finally also Massimo Vian, who had taken in the hand the whole operative part. The only one who grew up inside Luxottica is Francesco.
tax measures.
"Yes it is true, Italy has a high debt even if we are used to having it at high levels and then we have to compare it with the assets that are just as high". Already from today, with the electoral result obtained, we will understand a little bit more about the future of Italy, if it manages to ride the train of the global recovery or if it will enter an institutional stalemate that will eventually damage the economy. But from the headquarters of Paris Del Vecchio is ready for a new ride.
The scary question - how much worse can it get? ..................................
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Trina
So how quickly does everyone think this is going to impact smaller opticals and labs? The scary question - how much worse can it get?
Essilux will storm ahead with their plans of total domination of the optical market from manufacturing to optical laboratory control and the retail market.
They already have a basic stock of over 5,000 optical retail stores with different chains in the USA and Asia. And lots more will be added.
The consumer will side with them because of their lower retail pricing and being a master in supplying top quality products.
The non digital population that has reached old age and is slowly leaving this world is replaced by cell phone swingers that have everything they need to know at their fingertips.
The genuine wealthy consumers will still prefer the established retail opticians because of the highly personalized quality service, for which they will have to charge instead of putting it on the selling price out front, as has been the way to do it forever.
Support your independent suppliers .................................
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Don Gilman
SUPPORT YOUR INDEPENDENT SUPPLIERS ie. LABS, LENS/EQUIPMENT, FRAMES...
.........................that would have been the proper thing to do 10 years ago, when I already saw it coming.
Water under the bridge........
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Don Gilman
Water under the bridge.........Lets start NOW.
You are too late....................it has been displaced by avalanche country and your water under the bridge is now big amounts of snow and ice, waiting to bury everybody in the way.