Italy’s billions of Leonardo Del Vecchio, who have risen from Dickensian poverty and built a world-class giant that helped transform the chunky and fragmented eyewear industry into a fashion-oriented business, Milan on Monday. Died in. He was 87 years old.
His death Company announced, Now called Essilor Luxottica. The cause is not shown. A spokeswoman for a company said he died at San Raffaele Hospital.
Luxottica was largely overlooked outside the industry, but as the company has long known, it had the same advantage in the low-tech eyewear business as Google and Amazon.
We manufacture eyeglasses for luxury brands such as Ray-Ban, Armani, Bvlgari, Chanel and Brooks Brothers and sell them through our own retail chains such as Pearle Vision, LensCrafters and Sunglasses Hats. More than 60 years ago, Agordo in Italy became the world’s largest eyewear manufacturer with factories in Europe, Asia and the United States.
And he became one of the wealthiest men in Italy. Forbes magazine ranks him and his family 52nd on the list of the wealthiest people in the world this year, with an estimated net worth of $ 27.3 billion.
In a statement, Prime Minister Mario Draghi called Delvecchio “a leading Italian entrepreneur” and “a great Italian.”
“He brought the Agordo community and the whole country to the center of the world of innovation,” Draghi said.
Born May 22, 1935 in Milan, Delvecchio grew up in an orphanage. His father, a vegetable street pedestrian, died before Leonardo was born. His mother was already unable to take care of him, along with the other four children.
At the age of 14, he became an apprentice as a metal sculptor and then moved to a workshop to manufacture parts for eyeglass frames. “I started as a clerk,” he recalled years later in a company video. “They didn’t call me Leonardo, but they just called me a” boy. ” “
In 1961 he moved to the small town of Agordo in northeastern Italy and held his own workshop on making frame parts. The town provided free land to those who opened it.
He built his fledgling company, Luxottica, on a riverbank with an adjacent house for a young family. He started his job at 3am and had little time to do anything else.
“There was no kiss or hug,” his eldest daughter, Marisa de Vecchio, recalled in 1991 in Luxottica’s official biography of Delvecchio, “The Man of Farsightedness.” .. “
Del Vecchio came up with two innovations to win the competition.
He insisted on managing every part of the business, from manufacturing frame parts to assembling finished eyeglasses and distributing them through a global network of retailers.
He also pioneered the marriage of eyewear and fashion brands, turning practical necessities into fashion accessories as desirable as Gucci handbags and Air Jordan sneakers. Starting with Armani in 1988, over the next 20 years, he has signed license agreements with Ralph Lauren, Chanel and 12 other prominent designers. By sublimating his eyeglasses into fashion, he was able to charge the eyeglasses a price that could exceed $ 1,000.
As his business grew, Delvecchio bought established rivals such as Ray-Ban, Parsol, Sunglass Hut, Pearle Vision and Oakley.
In 1990, he listed Luxottica on the New York Stock Exchange. This is a rare move for midsize European companies, allowing access to equity capital and financing for acquisitions.
A well-cited example of his determination to expand was the 1995 hostile takeover of Ohio-based United States Shoe Corporation. This is a conglomerate with a market value five times that of Luxottica. His only interest was the company’s profitable LensCrafters store, the largest optical chain in the United States.
So he bought the company for $ 1.4 billion and sold everything except the LensCrafters.
Luxottica sold cheap frames in developing countries, sometimes even distributing eyeglasses through charities, with the aim of reaching every market segment.
By the time rivals caught up with Del Vecchio’s ambitions, his company had an exclusive license with 80% of the major designer brands and the power to set market prices across the eyewear industry.
Near the age of 70, Delvecchio announced his retirement in 2004, handing over management to young executive Andrea Gera. But ten years later, Delvecchio surprised shareholders by regaining Luxottica’s reins.
Analysts questioned the stability of both the company and its founders over the next three years as Delvecchio expelled Gera and appointed and dismissed three other CEOs. ..
But this turmoil spawned Delvecchio’s biggest deal. In 2017, at the age of 81, he announced a merger between Luxottica and Essilor, a French company that manufactured almost half of the world’s prescription lenses. He has been appointed Executive Chairman of Essilor Luxottica, which holds a 32% stake. In a call to investors disclosing his deal, he praised it as “achieving his lifelong dream.”
The new conglomerate was a nightmare for his Liliptian rivals. “The new company will not be technically monopolized.” Guardian pointed out.. “But there was no such thing in 7th century eyeglasses.”
Delvecchio married two women three times and had six children. His first wife, Luciana Nervo, had two daughters, Marisa and Paola, and her son, Claudio, who is now the CEO of clothing retailer Brooks Brothers. He had another son, Leonardo Maria, and his next wife, Nicoletta Zampillo. After divorcing her in 2000, he had two sons, Luka and Clemente, and his girlfriend Sabina Grossi. He remarried Zampillo in 2010. She survived him with his six children.
Even before the merger of Essilor, Luxottica’s dominance of the market resulted in “relatively sneaky” profits, Professor Tim Wu of Columbia University told Forbes.
However, the merger did not end Delvecchio’s ambitions. In 2019, he nearly doubled EssilorLuxottica’s retail network to more than 16,000 stores worldwide by acquiring a majority stake in Dutch optical retailer GrandVision.
In the company’s statement, the deal is called “another step towards our ambition to eradicate global vision loss by 2050.”
Elizabetta Poboled Contributed to the report from Rome.
