Luxottica

"Therefore, it is Essilor that incorporates Luxottica, but it is the majority shareholder of the Italian company who becomes the majority shareholder of the group after the merger. In other words, Leonardo wins again."

"The fact is that in the late spring of 2016, the French send an emissary to Milan to have a coffee with Leonardo. The two meet a stone's throw from the fashion district at one of the most elegant hotels in the city, which bears a hope for the future in its name: Palazzo Parigi. The boss doesn't believe in it much, he asks Francesco to take care of it, setting only one condition: he wants to count for his entire share. Instead, Milleri finds the right solution. The evolutionary leap is ready. The big day has arrived. It is a cold January night in 2017. The Financial Times breaks the news just after midnight. "Luxottica and Essilor have reached a 50 billion euro merger deal.""

"Milan becomes the center of life for Mister Luxottica; the house in Agordo is increasingly often closed, the helicopter becomes a taxi to occasionally return to the mountains, among his boys. The marriage will not last long, three years later Leonardo already has a new love, found within the company, from which two other children will be born: Luca and Clemente. But the couple's story does not end there. Nicoletta will become Mrs. Del Vecchio again ten years later. She and Leonardo will say "yes" again in 2010, giving life to what the curious call the "Luxottica dynasty.""

"Del Vecchio wants to launch his production line, he wants Luxottica glasses, thereby also entering into direct competition with the partners of Metalflex, but with two different lines, injection-molded acetate frames."

"It is the enterprising Leonardo who proposes the legal form of a simple limited partnership, advised by that Milanese lawyer he ran into by chance while strolling on Via Dante, the elegant shopping street a few dozen meters from the city's largest optical shop, Viganò, which will become his years later. Leonardo responds with all his assets, but he also has the right to manage the company, to define its strategic directions and development. The two Belluno-based partners are the financiers; they hold the majority of the shares but cannot meddle in the ordinary management of the small Luxottica."

"There are those who go directly from working at the Hotel Milano to making frames for Luxottica. Brothers, sisters, cousins, and friends. If you want to work and you present yourself at the factory, they hardly ever send you home."

"The newly-born Luxottica was able to benefit from a total contribution of 9 million lire to start its activity. Del Vecchio candidly admits that economic incentives played a crucial role in his migration to the Northeast: "The mountain community of Agordina offered free land to factories that would move there, so I left.""

"I produce the semi-finished goods necessary to make the glasses, why give this competitive advantage to the final assembler, if I can do everything in-house with the possibility of presenting a quality product at competitive prices? Why allow others to benefit from my expertise, if we can do everything ourselves here in Agordo? The answer is self-evident and it's called manufacturing of the finished product. And to his glasses, Leonardo wants to put his own brand: Luxottica."

"In Italy, Del Vecchio also expands into production by acquiring Sferoflex of Rovereto, a historic competitor, the first components he had worked on as an engraver at Johnson in the late 1940s. Sferoflex, grappling with a lack of succession, owns one of the most important patents of the sector, that of the elastic hinge for temples. At the beginning of 1981, Del Vecchio buys the Trentino company – which allows him to also overcome accusations of copying their patents – discovering how much his Luxottica is more advanced than competitors."

"The American acquisition of 1999 also made it known to the general public overseas: the Italian Luxottica, already listed for almost a decade on the New York Stock Exchange, buys a run-down Ray-Ban for 640 million dollars with an offer that outmaneuvers the main interested competitors, including the rival Safilo, who already thought they had the brand in the bag."

"Guerra, who will indeed go on to work with Prime Minister Renzi as an advisor for economic activities, leaves after ten years with a check for 50 million euros, including stock options repurchased by Del Vecchio, severance, and a non-compete agreement. In total, according to L’Espresso, Guerra leaves Luxottica with a personal nest egg of 170 million euros."

"The battle plan is simple and impactful: Ray-Ban ventures into prescription glasses to fill the void left by Re Giorgio's frames. New significant licenses are secured, Versace and Prada in 2003 being the most significant. It works. Luxottica recovers quickly."

"Ray-Ban, like Persol and dozens of the most famous luxury brands from Armani to Prada, is part of the lines produced by Luxottica under the careful guidance of an entrepreneur who, if he had been born in New York, would fully represent the American dream of the self-made man."

"The American chains become very powerful, imposing strict conditions on European manufacturers, basically asking Luxottica to sell eyewear at prices lower than those it offers to other customers; they want to take a large slice of the profit Del Vecchio makes on each pair of glasses sold. "Big distribution tends to kill the producer," Chemello explains to me. And at that time, it was gaining market share every year over independent opticians. For Leonardo, it's unacceptable: why should others enjoy the fruits of his labor, of his workers, of his factory?"

""Luxottica, the return of Del Vecchio. 'Roadshow' Mission," headlines the Corriere."

"Independent opticians, who represented 90% of the American market, rebelled, no longer wanting to buy Luxottica's frames, which had now become a direct competitor, a "major competitor," as the New York Times wrote."

"Francavilla, who will become an honorary citizen of Dongguan, the city where Luxottica settles, says that the development pace in China is astonishing: "We were growing like mushrooms. The first time we arrived there, there was nothing, just fields. There weren't even roads and now we have over twelve thousand employees.""

""Luxottica is a very big company, but if a company does not keep up with the times it lives in, it gets old. I do not want this to happen.""

"That January morning, Leonardo is going to ring the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange, to celebrate the debut of his Luxottica on the most important stock market in the world. "An unforgettable day," recalls Chemello, who keeps all the preparatory documents for the listing in his office in downtown Belluno, the highest point of his career at Luxottica. The story of leadership in the sector also counts a lot in that choice. Leonardo goes to prove to the entire world that the son of the Martinitt has conquered the summit, he is number one. His "factory" is the largest company in the world in the production and sale of glasses. It controls about 10% of the global market. But few know this, many are unaware of it, some still don't want to believe it. Del Vecchio, on the other hand, started decades after his major competitors; he began as a small subcontractor, he never flaunted his conquests; he has overtaken or purchased rivals with an insatiable necessity for growth, without going around telling of his victories and expansion."

"Presented as a "very good young and experienced die-maker," he wins the trust of the partners from Belluno. "Of course, being a subcontractor in Milan with factories far away, in Cadore, actually created logistic problems, connections, there was an issue of timing," explains Mister Luxottica, when he recalls the days of the decision to leave Milan. "The proposal was made to me by one of them outlining a changeable convenience, that's why I moved." Del Vecchio finds it natural to go into partnership with what was his best customer. The entrepreneurs from Cadore set precise conditions, however: to establish a company in which they would be the majority."

"He wants a Luxottica that rectifies past mistakes and fills its gaps: development of the digital channel, acquisition of a large retail chain in Europe - a piece that has always been missing, a market in which the Dutch of GrandVision are thriving - and expansion into the corrective lenses sector."

"In the abandoned sheds of the former headquarters of General Electric, built in the 1920s, Luxottica has created its "digital hub," a place designed to immerse its customers in a world of high technology."

"The road that leads me to Agordo, the town that Del Vecchio has transformed from a declining mountain village into "Luxottica Town," must start where it all began thanks to the visionary tenacity of a group of late nineteenth-century boys."

"Del Vecchio turned a village that was depopulating into Luxottica Town, with the courage of someone with nothing to lose, gradually securing the best slices of the market and leaving the people of Cadore with more than a few regrets, as well as the feeling that they had not fully seized the opportunity that Frescura's dream had brought them."

"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."

"Purchase the Italian distributor of Luxottica products: Scarrone SpA of Turin. Scarrone, with its six agents, opens the Italian market directly to Luxottica. It also represents for Del Vecchio the way to face the domestic arena from which he was essentially excluded. "I began to suffer from the fact of not being present and not selling in Italy, and so I bought one of the best retailers in our market." For opticians and many of its competitors, it is practically heresy, it breaks an unwritten rule. For Luxottica it is also a great opportunity to learn, a learning experience from other realities that allows Del Vecchio to know all aspects of his sector. For him, it is the first direct experience in sales and marketing. To manage the subsidiary he puts a trusted person, his older brother Michele, who joins him from Milan, where he manages a drugstore."

"Every expansion "will be the last, I swear. Never again..." and after a few months, it's back to square one, Goldoni recounts in his book. The reason is simple. The demand for Luxottica frames is growing at whirlwind rates, more than 20% each year."

"In the hall of the Milan offices of Luxottica, in a Liberty-style building at Piazzale Lotto, Del Vecchio faces a difficult, crowded press conference. Everyone wants to know who this entrepreneur from Cadore is, who, born in Milan in 1935, spent seven years in the "Martinitt" orphanage and has a great entrepreneurial spirit, in thirty years has grown a company that now produces 50,000 pairs of glasses a day, employs 3,500 workers, is listed on the Wall Street Stock Exchange, has a turnover of 460 billion and makes a net profit of 60 billion."

"King Giorgio is looking for lines completely different from those Luxottica was proposing. After endless meetings, they arrive at a round style typical of English models of the time. The famous metal ovale is born, which will become an icon. Armani himself adopts it personally and will never leave it. From the late eighties, the oval eyeglass for either prescription or sunglasses enters the official iconography of the designer, in photos that portray him with his inseparable black t-shirt."

"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."

"In addition to the technological leap towards digital and e-commerce, Del Vecchio sees Luxottica as too bureaucratic, full of different structures, power centers, very far from the one he founded, which has made simplicity one of its characteristics."

"What drives him is always the same need that he's had inside since he was a boy: not having to depend on others, to be autonomous. "When you work for a subcontractor, you are in the hands of your employer, practically," he explains. "Everything started from my fear of having a future conditioned by others." At a certain point, he told his partners: "Look, from now on I would like the frames that come out of this factory to have our brand. And that's where the real Luxottica began." The best is yet to come."

"However, Armani wants a closer relationship and to seal the collaboration he asks for a stake in the company: first he enters with 2%, then 3%, and finally, 5%. We know how much Mister Del Vecchio is protective of his creation and the shareholdings, so it takes time to get him over the hurdle of letting a new partner in. Armani represents a turning point for Leonardo. It allows the "mountaineers" of Agordo to associate with the coolest designer in the world, Leonardo Del Vecchio to become a protagonist in fashion in the city where he grew up in poverty, to enter through the main door at Fashion week shows. Armani will also enter the board of directors of Luxottica. "The success and innovative dimension of the business, both in production and distribution, with the pioneering opening towards emerging markets, convinced me, as well as the entrepreneurial vision of Leonardo Del Vecchio.""

""It's not worth continuing to argue. There's one year left and then it's over," he tells me at our first meeting in 2020. After three years of forced cohabitation regulated by equal governance agreements, in the spring of 2021 the shares finally count, Del Vecchio is able to assert the influence of his relative controlling stake and make one of his most important decisions, with the appointment of Francesco Milleri to lead the entire group. "We modernized Luxottica, we have to do the same with Essilor," he tells me confidently a year away from the expiration of the pact. "When I came back to lead the group in 2014, I had to fix many things, it took us six years to restructure the company. Now we will do the same with Essilor.""

"dimensional leap. He talks to the banks, finds the credit, and embarks on a transformational operation, as the analysts would call it. He buys 50% of Avant-Garde for 11 million dollars in a year when the company has a turnover of about 20 billion lire, which is about 14 million dollars at the current exchange rate. Numbers that show how risky the operation was. He flies to Long Island, on the outskirts of New York facing the ocean, to enter the American market through the front door, becoming a partner of one of the largest wholesalers in the world. The acquisition leads Luxottica to become the leader of the American market with a 7% share. Del Vecchio plays the American. That turning point is decisive, he explains. "I had the courage to go to America and make the big leap. From that moment on, we became number one.""

"Luxottica, on the other hand, grows and continues to produce in its Agordo. But it's not all rosy. Relations with the partners are not idyllic from the start. From Metalflex, they send an accountant once a week to help with the accounts and payrolls. Leonardo does not want interference in the management. Cortà and Toscani fear his ambition; they treat him more as a supplier to be squeezed than a business partner. They leave him very low margins on their commissions, exploiting his work as a subcontractor to the fullest for the interests of the parent company. They push on the price, paying him less than 200 lire per frame, when at wholesale they cost 300-400 lire, recounts a witness of those years. They don't trust him, he's too enterprising. They swoop down on Agordo without notice to check what he's doing. When they arrive at the factory, they go around every workbench. From the office windows, they open the blinds to look into the department. "Make sure to look very busy when they pass, so they don't say we are doing nothing," Del Vecchio tells one of his most trusted boys. Del Vecchio doesn't lose his composure, at least not in public. Thanks to his great technical abilities and the technological innovations he introduces to the machinery to increase productivity, he manages to stay afloat regardless."

"⁠The most emblematic example is his right-hand man, the iron general who will lead the productive growth of Luxottica for the following decades: Luigi Francavilla.⁠"

"Luxottica will become, in the eyes of some of the most critical, a de facto monopoly, capable of dictating the price of its products with increasing margins, without any control."

"Armani explains it to me simply. "My personal adventure as a designer and entrepreneur was already underway, and I had begun to extend my aesthetic to various areas, including eyewear. It was then that I identified Luxottica as the company with the right know-how to realize what I had in mind. It was a fortunate meeting: I would do what I did best, which is creativity, Del Vecchio would perfectly manufacture the product. We both understood that glasses, from simple functional objects, would become indispensable fashion accessories. And so it has been." The licensing agreement is signed, a contract typified by Armani himself in the clothing industry, which provides for a percentage, the so-called royalties in favor of the designer, generally 10%."

"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 signature forcefully enters into the Agordo factory. And this is just the first step. In the following years, Luxottica strings together a series of agreements to expand its portfolio: Valentino, Yves Saint Laurent, and then Emporio Armani as well."

""Here, our job is to ensure that the families" of the male and female workers, who are the majority at Luxottica, "can look at their children's lives with more serenity while they give their all to their company. We want to be able to make sure that the children of our exceptional workers have the chance to study in the best places there are. All this to restart a mechanism of social elevator, of equal entry which I always think is the founding principle of a community.""

"Del Vecchio tells, who hardly speaks English, that he went directly to present the offer to the Americans. He did not have an interpreter with him. He still remembers the sniggers in the room of American managers when he formalized the purchase price. At that time, it seemed an enormity. "But I knew the glasses sector well and what Ray-Ban could give me. It would open the doors of any optician in the world. They could not understand that," he tells me. Game over. "Ray-Ban becomes Italian, American Bausch & Lomb sells it to Luxottica," announces the Corriere della Sera on April 29, 1999."

"The time has come for Luxottica to take another leap forward. Being a parts supplier is not enough for Del Vecchio; others are reaping the benefits of the quality of his work in their finished products. He is ready to produce glasses, he wants to dance alone. This is his moment of "creative destruction," as the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter would define it. Del Vecchio creates that "storm" that allows the industry an evolutionary leap, that process of mutation that revolutionizes the corporate structure from within. He takes no prisoners. He represents the new wave advancing in a rigid sector, breaking patterns and balances. In some way, a natural choice; after years of apprenticeship in the industry, he realized that he could directly produce quality products at a competitive price. He has technical skills honed over the years as a supplier thanks to constant technological innovation, often implemented directly by Del Vecchio himself on the machinery he has available to streamline the production process. An obsession with perfection, convinced of the fact that the only way to grow in a world of giants, from the German company Melzer to the Austrian Carrera, is to offer the best products. It is the first approach to a process of vertical integration that represents for Leonardo a true fixation."

"During Guerra's tenure at the top, Luxottica's share price went from 13 to 40 euros per share, more than tripling its value in ten years. Market capitalization has gone from about 6 billion euros to almost 20."

"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."

"Moreover, the arrival of Del Vecchio manages to overturn the fate of the valley as not even the landing of an alien spaceship could. It radically changes the economy and the fate of the working-aged women and men. In the beginning, in 1961, there were just over a dozen in that single Belluno facility. Sixty years later, they are one hundred and eighty thousand all over the world. Luxottica alone has fifteen production facilities from Italy to Brazil, from China to the United States, with offices in one hundred and fifty countries."

"Del Vecchio decided that a new plant had to be opened as soon as possible lower down, below the mountains, where there was no risk of being blocked. He talked with the mayors of the area and ended up in Sedico. In four months, the new factory was ready, 5,000 square meters built in record time. You couldn't stop. You had to run. The numbers spoke for themselves. The company's turnover was multiplied by ten in five years: from 16 billion lire in 1979 to 155 in 1984. Luxottica ran faster than Carl Lewis at the Los Angeles Olympics. Leonardo is the real son of the wind."

"Here the Del Vecchios prepare briefcases for the representatives, choose collections and models. Leonardo mainly follows his own intuition, and it works. While in Cadore they specialize in plastic, Luxottica focuses on metal glasses. In a very rigid sector, where competitors produce a limited range of products, Luxottica bets on "low cost and many models." Three sample collections are prepared each year, two prescription and one sunglasses."

"During the Guerra era, accusations against Luxottica had been made by one of America's most important television programs, 60 Minutes. The thesis is that, by controlling the major sales chains and the production of the most prestigious brands, Luxottica can arbitrarily set the price of its products, creating a fake competition behind which lies an actual market monopoly."

"After the Milan Fair, Del Vecchio and Francavilla return from Milan to Agordo aboard Leonardo's 1100. They have gathered orders for two years of production. They still have no idea how to keep up with all those requests. They have to transform a small factory in the Dolomites into an international exporter. The best is yet to come. But one thing is certain. At MIDO, in the early 1970s, Leonardo had the proof that he was right, that Luxottica was ready to produce and sell complete glasses with its own brand. That the decision made four years earlier was the right one, just as he had always thought in his heart."

"The seventies are the years of the realization of Mister Luxottica, who can afford the first comforts of an established industrialist. Among these, the luxury of being served lunch in a round private dining room. Leonardo is always elegant, impeccable. He invariably ends his meal with a peeled apple cut into four pieces, an imprint from the orphanage he never forgot."

"In the workshop, they prepare eight metal models. Simple, elegant, and essential frames. Well made. Storing them, lined up in the gallery of all Luxottica models in a dedicated room in the headquarters in Agordo, they make the effect of Steve Jobs's first Mac. A product that starts an icon."

""I used to come to the factory in the morning at five or six, whenever I woke up, and I would stay until midnight." That's why he prefers to talk about Luxottica, rather than about himself. The identification is such that it's only the company that fully represents the entrepreneur. Loved ones – wife, children, siblings – necessarily take a back seat in those years. "The company is my life," he says in the interview with Biagi. "And it's also a great responsibility.""

"Luxottica is still a small company, Del Vecchio is a paternalistic father figure who has a direct relationship with his workers. He doesn't want intermediaries, he doesn't accept threats and can be very tough. A demonstration organized by unionists from other industrial areas reaches right up to the gates. That day, in Agordo, buses of striking workers arrive from Cadore. The target is the Rizzato moped factory, Luxottica's neighbor, often in crisis; the workers' struggle there is real."

"Leonardo then sends a trusted Agordo collaborator to Texas, directly to the factory. It's August, while the boss is on vacation he asks the manager to call him every day and tell him how many "pieces" they have produced to get a clear idea of how much needs to change. On the first day, practically none, then a dozen, then even less. Every day there's something wrong, machines break down, unskilled workers, lack of competence and knowledge. The decision is immediate. Let's bring everything home, let's make them in Agordo. Luxottica closes all the group's factories, lays off the workers – there are about 3,500 – and sends to Italy what they can recover."

"The family, the wife, the children have nothing to do with it. His interest is still all for Luxottica; he must bring it back to the center of change, make it take a radical dimensional leap, add lenses to the frames, and enter the digital world. These, he explains, are his motivations. Instead, he finds himself described as an old tool with a glorious past and no intention of letting go, surrounded by a cumbersome family and an intrusive friend."

"The giant is not considered a monopolist, despite Luxottica's vertical integration and the barriers to entry created by Essilor."

"He explains in the interview with Montemagno: "The end of Luxottica was less beautiful than the whole journey. For me, it was quite traumatic.""

"Luxottica then sells over 80 million frames around the world every year. That means almost 3 frames per second, 9,500 every hour, 230,000 every day, 7 million every month."

"They tell me that after the annual event at Villa d'Este, where Luxottica celebrates and presents itself to major customers, Leonardo sends a note to Andrea. "Thanks for everything." The manager is stunned, flabbergasted. He's out. It's the end of the Guerra era. The return of the hungry and visionary leader, as Steve Jobs would say."

"Del Vecchio has started making complete glasses, but that is not enough for him. He wants to put the Luxottica stamp on his frames. He talks to Da Cortà about it once, and the partner asks him to wait a year. The following year, he comes back stronger, for him it is essential to start selling his own glasses."

"He is dealing with the game with the cumbersome Cadorino partners. A good part of the semi-finished products of the first Luxottica ends up at Metalflex. They are years of crazy and desperate work during which Leonardo dedicates himself body and soul to his enterprise, showing no consideration for anyone, they say. He begins to also produce for other Belluno companies: stamps, molds, handmade accessories, and parts of frames."

""Essilor and Delfin," the holding company of the Del Vecchio family, "create a global and integrated player in the eyewear industry with the combination of Essilor and Luxottica," reads the press release with an attached photograph of Hubert and Leonardo shaking hands, smiling and seemingly happy."

"Formally, it is Essilor that is buying Luxottica, the new company is based in France and is listed on the Paris Stock Exchange."

"Luxottica becomes the largest user of New York's John Fitzgerald Kennedy airport, where planes loaded with frames arrive from Italy to be immediately distributed to every corner of America."

"Luxottica was becoming the world leader and couldn't stop because of a snowfall."

"The son takes over the management of US Shoe's clothing division, Casual Corner, a business that is doing very poorly and is losing a lot of money, so much so that Del Vecchio, in order not to weigh on Luxottica's budget, transfers it under the control of the family holding company."

"On April 18, the agreement is reached. Luxottica acquires US Shoe for 1.4 billion dollars, as written in a lengthy article by the New York Times. Italy, for the first time, openly celebrates the timid Leonardo. "Luxottica, winning move in the USA," opens the economics section with a full-page headline and a callout on the front page in Corriere della Sera."

"The simple partnership company Luxottica SAS is officially formed in Piazza Emanuele II in Belluno, in front of the notary Adolfo Soccal. Luxottica, a name that will become a world leader."

"Investors, analysts, and the press do not appreciate it, in a media short-circuit in which the fate of Luxottica and the events related to the distribution among family members of the holding company's shares mingle and intertwine without interruption. The stock plummets, the worst drop in the last two years. Leonardo decides to return to the helm in a triumvirate with two other managers, one for the markets area and one for the production area."

"Before Del Vecchio, the stories of Edoardo Bianchi and Angelo Rizzoli stand out, who were also fatherless orphans with mothers in such serious difficulty that the boarding school was the only solution for giving their children a future. Bianchi was born in Milan in 1865 to a crumbling family. His father, fallen into disgrace after his well-established grocery store was destroyed by the Austrian military as reprisal, returns mutilated from the war of independence and dies shortly after, leaving mother Antonietta in poverty. Left an orphan, Edoardo is taken in by the boarding school where he learns the trade of a mechanic. He starts working at just eight years old in the city's workshops, with the goal of setting up his own business as soon as possible. This is a constant for the Martinitt: to build something of their own, without having to depend on anyone anymore or adhere to the rules imposed by others. At just twenty years old, he opens his own small business in the center, on Nirone street, which – ironically – is located just a few hundred meters from Luxottica's current headquarters. In his mechanical workshop, he produces and repairs wheelchairs for the sick, precision machinery, electric bells, surgical instruments, and bicycles, as can be clearly seen on the display window. Bianchi specializes so much in the assembly of bicycles that he invents the modern bicycle in 1888. His "bicicletto" is the first example in Italy in which the front and rear wheel have the same diameter. Bianchi is a hardworking craftsman, full of ideas, ready to churn out innovations: the use of pneumatic tires, the introduction of the motorized bicycle. He designs a special frame to make the bicycle accessible to ladies who, at the time, were hindered from riding them due to the width of their skirts: thus, the bicycle is born. Bianchi becomes a celebrity, so much so that he is invited by Queen Margherita of Savoy – she who was the first testimonial for Angelo Frescura's eyeglasses from Belluno – to showcase his invention at the park of Monza."

"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."

"Even they had not realized the quality of the dozen or so models they had prepared, which were essentially the sum of all the know-how Del Vecchio had accumulated in the first ten years of Luxottica's life. The company was already a specialized third-party manufacturer, one of the best in the field, producing all the components, from the temples to the fronts for others. When they decide to assemble their own product, they become their own suppliers, skipping a stage in the value chain, and thus they can offer it at a lower price than anyone else. They become super competitive. The explanation of such a disruptive success by the owner of Luxottica is, as usual, simple, almost banal, somehow expected: "We had made a truly innovative product.""

"The competition is not very aggressive and allows Luxottica to quickly gain market share; the margins in the sector are extremely high, guaranteeing Del Vecchio plenty of cash to continue investing in the most advanced machinery, which allows him to expand his competitive advantage year after year."

"Sedico, the valley town that would become in 2000 the Italian center of Luxottica’s logistics: a 36,000 square meter facility from where more than two hundred thousand pairs of glasses leave every day, providing employment to over eight hundred people, with shifts starting at five in the morning to follow the different time zones of the factories scattered all over the world. In Sedico, both frames and ophthalmic lenses are produced with automated systems. The optician’s prescription comes in, and the finished product comes out, ready to go directly to the store for the end customer. The complete circle of vertical integration takes place in this facility. Luxottica’s Amazon resides here."

"Mediobanca and Generali missed that qualitative, and sizeable, leap that he had the courage to make with Luxottica. It needs to be done. He wants to make them play the international game."

"At the end of 2014, Luxottica recorded a net profit of over 640 million euros on a turnover of 7.652 billion, an absolute record despite changes at the top and attacks on the patron."

"He sees the company as too slow, a pachyderm. He feels that it is time to return and set things right. He is convinced that Luxottica needs a real revolution to remain a protagonist in a world that changes at the speed of light."

"It seems as though he is there, becoming increasingly embittered when he reads and realizes that the manager he chose to lead Luxottica into the future is not dedicating all his time to his factory and is, instead, appearing more frequently at events that have very little to do with glasses."

"It creates an attachment to the company on the part of the workers who, together with the advantage of being in a closed valley where there are basically no other secondary employment opportunities, allows Luxottica to have a very stable base of employees imbued with corporate values."

"It is an extremely competitive sector. In May 1970, 12,500 models of glasses were on display. It is within this context that Del Vecchio risks everything. Having gained independence from the original partners, Luxottica is fighting the battle for survival."

"despite the successes of his Luxottica, Del Vecchio never feels at ease, never."

""Sunglasses, but also prescription glasses, from that moment on are no longer just a prosthesis. They become a fashion accessory, a means to express one's lifestyle, one's personality and image," explains Del Vecchio. For Luxottica, it's a new, profitable revolution."

"For Luxottica, it is also an extraordinary time to learn new skills from the leader of an adjacent sector. It's not easy; the first models proposed to the stylist are completely rejected. The Luxottica collection is not aligned. In Agordo, they understand that every signature has its own DNA that must be followed and accommodated. The unstructured jackets must fit into the style of the glasses. "Doing minimalism with glasses was not easy," one of Leonardo's longtime collaborators explains to me."

"It is here that Del Vecchio sets up the first Luxottica signed collection, opens his briefcase, and arranges on the table the dozen or so metal models just made. For days they have debated the price to attack the competition with. On one hand, the goal is to give fair value to the thirty stages and more than one hundred and twenty processes necessary to create the glasses, on the other hand, there is the necessity to enter the market with a competitive price. They are desperately in need of orders and customers. They decide to start low. They sell the frames at 600 lire apiece."

"Luxottica, which thanks to its vertical integration creates natural entry barriers for anyone who wants to venture into the business of frames, where the margins are much higher compared to more mature industrial sectors and high capital intensity, such as automotive."

"reaching the elegant Piazza del Broi, among dozens of young people at the café tables enjoying an Spritz; many of them are employees – workers and office staff – of Luxottica, having arrived here from all over the country and even from abroad."

"Lozza is a master craftsman, making continuous changes to the machinery that he himself has made to produce glasses thanks to the financing from Frescura, who invests all the profits from his business as a merchant in Padua into production. Another common trait with the future Mr. Luxottica: investing the profits in the company, in technology, machinery, and human capital."

"If everything inside has remained unchanged, outside the Luxottica world has grown immensely. The house, a symbol of his definitive landing into the big bourgeoisie, is located right at the entrance of the mega-factory in Agordo, what in the company is called "the blue sea," from the color of the paint it was painted, a shade that over the years has become a sort of social color. Little marketing and a lot of substance even in that choice, explains to me the associate Luigi Francavilla, amused. "I liked blue because it was the color of the large factory where I worked in Switzerland before coming here." When the painter arrived, he had a can of paint in that shade. He swiped two brushstrokes. They watched him. Del Vecchio said, "It's fine." No soul searching or team meetings to choose the right shade to represent the values of the group. There was simply the need to paint the first shed."

"The shares of Delfin are being adjusted. To his wife Nicoletta will go 25%, the legitimate inheritance for the spouse. The remaining 75% is divided into equal shares for the six children. But in the following years, agreements are also stipulated that shield Luxottica from any possible family disputes."

"He offers them 45 million lire each for a stake that less than ten years earlier was worth 500,000 lire, proving that Luxottica is no longer a startup looking for fortune, but an established company nearing one hundred employees."

"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."

"He fears that Luxottica has become a normalized company, one of those where some managers only look after their own garden, ignoring the big goals, they look at their own finger and miss the moon."

"There are those who try to break free. Some are encouraged by Del Vecchio himself to open micro subcontractor companies for parts, as he did as a boy in Milan, which have in Luxottica their only supplier. In those cases, Leonardo essentially holds the future of the subcontractors in his hands and manages them as if they were his employees."

"While in the valley where the eyewear industry was born a hundred years earlier, there was a fragmentation of the sector into micro-enterprises at that time, Luxottica becomes dominant."

"Luxottica by Del Vecchio & C., as read in the original document, starts with an initial capital of 1,500,000 liras and is established until December 31, 2000. The corporate purpose is "the industry and trade of eyewear, printing, and related activities." In 1961, Del Vecchio invests 500,000 lire for 33% of the company, the equivalent of about 6,000 euros today. Sixty years later, his share, 32% of EssilorLuxottica, is worth about 25 billion euros. From 6,000 to 25 billion in sixty years."

"At a certain point during lunch, De Bortoli on Corriere reports, Del Vecchio asks Hubert who will take over after the first three years of transition. "Me," the Frenchman replies sharply. Del Vecchio's eyes pop out, this is just not right. "I was dumbfounded," recalls the number one of Luxottica, "but I continued to converse as if nothing had happened. We bid each other farewell cordially." Del Vecchio is very kind, Hubert believes he has closed a deal and found an agreement."

""I put all of Luxottica's share, over fifty years of work, to create a group leader at the global level. The outcome wasn't at all certain. We succeeded.""

"Luxottica is his real family, his greatest pride, his reason for living."

"Even in 1971, size played in favor of the Cadore valley, where the Italian eyewear industry was born. Out of the 136 local establishments in the sector, more than 84% are concentrated in Cadore as opposed to 4% in Agordo, essentially only Luxottica. Of the 2,713 employees in the sector in the province of Belluno, Agordo accounts for 189, just over 7%."

"At first, there are a dozen of them, but year by year they more than double, demonstrating that at Luxottica there is no shortage of orders."

"There is a happy ending to the divorce between two of the greatest entrepreneurs of our country. "I realized how the high manufacturing quality, the attention to detail, and the combination of technology and craftsmanship ensured by Luxottica, in addition to the market penetration capacity, were unparalleled. This brought back the desire to collaborate, and the renewed successes were confirmation that it was the right choice," Armani says to me. Under the guidance of Andrea Guerra, Luxottica ten years later wins back King George."

""I didn't think they would accept that kind of offer, which basically gave me control of the company's management," he tells me. "But they said: 'All right'. And that's how Luxottica was born." That afternoon, a small subcontracting firm was being born, destined to revolutionize the world of eyewear, to conquer it meter by meter."

""Of course, being a subcontractor in Milan with factories far away, in Cadore, actually created logistic problems, connections, there was an issue of timing," explains Mister Luxottica, when he recalls the days of the decision to leave Milan."

"Guerra thinks about the new Luxottica in emerging countries and capturing two billion new potential consumers. His presence becomes more and more visible. He becomes a public figure who gives speeches at the country's most important events."