"You’ll likely need to fork out over $350 for luxury eyewear – a price that’s framed through one lens of an $8.5 billion public company majestically shielded in the mountains of Italy...More than 80% of major eyewear brands, including the world’s No. 1 seller, Ray-Ban, are designed and retailed (over 7,000 stores US alone) by Luxottica, raising questions about brand authenticity, price and customer choice," goes a
recent post in Forbes. "Products exist in the mind and brands live in the heart: Luxury brands conjure up lifestyle interpretations we want to buy into. More than 500 million people don Luxottica’s products and CEO Andrea Guerra insists that 'customers have the brand choice for their lifestyle'...If you owned 80% of the high-end eyewear market and were doing what any CMO desires – achieving brand growth, relevance and revenue–you’d say that too, right? That may be the 'business' of brands, but if the product itself has had zero design input from the name on the frame, what of authenticity and brand promise? Recently the
Economist quoted Rodney Collins, a director at advertising agency McCann, saying, 'above all else brands must appear to be "authentic" if they want to succeed.'"
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Fox Business News reported yesterday that "Italy's eyewear giant Luxottica...has agreed to pay 45 million euros ($58.3 million) for a minority stake in Italian eyewear retail group Salmoiraghi & Vigano. In a filing to the Italian stock exchange, the company said it will buy newly issued shares of Salmoiraghi & Vigano representing a 36% stake in the eyewear retailer. Salmoiraghi & Vigano owns approximately 500 stores across Italy and its net sales for the fiscal year ended Sept. 30 stood at some EUR170 million."
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