The French eyewear giant that owns Vancouver’s Clearly plans to merge with another sector heavyweight: Italy’s Luxottica, which owns brands such as Ray-Ban and Oakley as well as retail chains such as Sunglasses Hut and Lenscrafter.
The combined company, EssilorLuxottica, will annually generate about €15-billion in sales and €3.5-billion in operating income. It will be a Paris-based giant that employs about 140,000 people and has customers in about 150 countries.
Luxottica's founder and majority shareholder Leonardo Del Vecchio, who is 81 years old, will be the biggest shareholder of the combined group. He will also be the new company's CEO and executive chairman.
Essilor CEO Hubert Sagnières, who has worked in Canada and has dual citizenship from both France and Canada, will be deputy CEO and vice-chairman. Sagnières is 61 years old.
The merger, which is expected to close by the end of the year, makes sense because Essilor is primarily known for making lenses while Luxottica is known mostly for frames. Luxottica, however, has been diversifying its business to include revenue from providing eyewear services within Target stores.
Both Essilor and Luxottica are global behemoths and most of Luxottica’s revenue comes from North America.
Essilor bought Clearly for about $430 million in April 2014 and quickly installed Roy Hessel as the division’s CEO.
Hessel is also one of this year’s Business in Vancouver 40 under 40 winners and will be honoured at a January 25 event.
He told BIV in October that Clearly’s revenue is deep in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and the profitable venture is investing in innovative areas to ensure future growth.
For example, it is doing research to develop a smartphone app that would enable users to determine their prescription without having to see an optician.
Clearly is investing resources and staff time to help Israel-based 6over6 develop an application that enables people to determine their eyewear prescriptions by taking a photo of their eyes with smartphones that have multiple cameras.
The public release of that app is likely at least a couple of years away, although a prototype already exists, Hessel said. For more on innovations at Clearly, click here.
