LensCrafters

"purchasing LensCrafters will help push Americans to buy higher quality products. "Our is a long-term investment: we want to design the future. Luxottica only produces mid-range, medium-high, and high-end eyewear. But today many consumers are unable to recognize the better product. In the future, it will not be so." In the end, Leonardo also wins this battle."

"On March 4, 1995, he launches a "hostile" takeover bid, i.e., not agreed upon with the management, worth 1.8 trillion lire to take control of US Shoe. The offer is financed for 1.45 billion dollars by Credit Suisse. This was the big move that Leonardo had in mind when he decided to list his Luxottica in New York. A raider's move, some compare it to Gordon Gekko from the film Wall Street, who reveals his predator nature to the financial world. The goal is to take over LensCrafters and sell off the other divisions of the American conglomerate, breaking it up into parts and selling them to the highest bidder. The Americans aren't having it, they counterattack using all the "poison pills" they have at their disposal to block the advancing Italian. In Ohio, where LensCrafters is based, they call it the eyewear war."

"The very concept of competition goes out the window when you are the owner of the shack who chooses which products to sell, this is contested. Leonardo doesn't care, honestly. LensCrafters is what Luxottica needs to safeguard the business in its most important market."

"The accusations are particularly heavy from some American observers, the country where Luxottica has heavily entered the retail sector since the acquisition of LensCrafters, competing directly with independent opticians, who are very fierce and stir up the press to criticize."

"His plan to snatch up LensCrafters by launching a hostile offer for the entire group that controls it, US Shoe, seems quite "eccentric" on paper, writes the Guardian newspaper. US Shoe is a conglomerate that has, in addition to the chain of opticians, shoe stores and clothing brands, a stock market value of over five times the Italian company, and its board of directors has no intention of selling."

"Despite many opticians and competing chains deciding not to sell products made in Agordo anymore, Luxottica increased sales of its frames in LensCrafters chain stores from 5% in 1995 to 43% in 1996. The new American chain doubled Luxottica's turnover in just one year."

"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."

"LensCrafters was founded in 1983 by Dean Butler, a Michigan entrepreneur, who had set his mind on changing the world of opticians. Why wait days to deliver complete glasses after the visit? Just add a lab to the store and the processing can be done immediately. The idea had come to him when he was a manager at Procter & Gamble, helping a colleague who had resigned to take over the family's optical shop. With a few television spots, he had managed to quadruple sales every month, demonstrating how backward the sector was from a commercial point of view. There were prairies to conquer, given that the American market for opticians had just been liberalized and most of the sales were covered by health insurance. Visiting the labs, he realized that the operations to make a complete pair of glasses lasted no more than twenty minutes, yet customers were made to wait for days. "It all happened by chance, I saw an incredible opportunity. How was it possible to wait weeks when you could deliver finished glasses in less than an hour?" he tells the website of the University of Michigan. Butler opens his first store in Kentucky, in the Florence shopping center, across the Ohio River, in the great suburbs of Cincinnati. The idea exploits the boom of the "malls," the new agoras of Americans, the indoor squares where they go shopping and eat fast food, where love stories are born, where grandparents are taken to cool off in summer and to warm up in winter. The concept of glasses prepared on the spot is perfect for American customers, who while waiting go to eat at McDonald's, go shopping at Macy's, or take children on the indoor colorful rides. LensCrafters was thus born, the first chain of stores that assembles your product within an hour. Butler then sold the chain to the US Shoe Corporation conglomerate, remaining CEO."