Close Every Circle Until Control Is Complete
Books Teaching This Pattern
Evidence
I, Baron Thyssen: Memoirs (translated)
Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza · 2 highlights
“He was a perfect visionary and had a clear concept of what a round business should be: for a steel factory to provide highly profitable benefits, it was necessary to have, at the same time, iron and coal mines to supply it; shipyards for building and repairing; tugs and ships that could transport raw materials and finished products between production and processing centers; own ports in which to store the products and load them before sending them to their destinations; navigation and distribution lines; financial entities and banks with which to cover that temporal bridge generated between purchase and sale; and, finally, qualified people to perfectly coordinate the operations and ensure that these were carried out at the right time and place.”
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Leonardo Del Vecchio
Tommaso Ebhardt · 4 highlights
“in 1995, Leonardo pulls off a move that catches the competitors off guard. He launches a surprise hostile offer to buy the US Shoe Corporation, which owns LensCrafters, the largest optical store chain in the world. The acquisition would allow Del Vecchio to close the circle in his vertical integration strategy.”
“Now that his company has become a center of excellence in the production of frames, Del Vecchio must change his skin. It's time to delegate the production side to Francavilla and dedicate himself to studying the market, the commercial side, an area where he and his trusted colleagues have no experience. "Working with distributors had become too risky," he explains. Luxottica is at the mercy of others' choices. It's time for a new evolutionary leap: to develop the commercial network to bypass the distributors. "I could no longer work with wholesalers," they represent the brake for companies, he's hard on it. "In the long run, a wholesaler is the death of companies because it forces them to live day-to-day. This is a conviction I have come to through personal experience." The reasoning is simple. A distributor sells your glasses only as long as they derive a direct benefit but keeps their hands free, ready to abandon you if they find a product that is more popular or allows them greater margins.”