Leonardo Del Vecchio Dies at 87; Transformed Eyeglass Industry

Leonardo Del Vecchio, the Italian multibillionaire who rose from Dickensian poverty to develop a world-straddling behemoth that aided renovate the stodgy, fragmented eyeglass sector into a vogue-oriented company, died on Monday in Milan. He was 87.

His loss of life was announced by the enterprise, now termed EssilorLuxottica. No trigger was specified. A enterprise spokeswoman mentioned he experienced died at San Raffaele Healthcare facility.

Whilst largely unnoticed outside of the field, Luxottica, as the enterprise was lengthy recognized, achieved as much dominance in the very low-tech, eyeglasses organization as Google and Amazon have in theirs.

Manufacturing glasses for luxury brands like Ray-Ban, Armani, Bulgari, Chanel and Brooks Brothers, and promoting them as a result of firm-owned retail chains like Pearle Vision, Lenscrafters and Sunglass Hut, the firm, which Mr. Del Vecchio started out in his house in Agordo, Italy, more than 60 a long time ago, turned the world’s largest eyewear maker, with factories in Europe, Asia and the Americas.

And he turned 1 of Italy’s wealthiest adult males. Forbes magazine ranked him and his household 52nd on its list of the world’s wealthiest individuals this yr, estimating their internet well worth at $27.3 billion.

Prime Minister Mario Draghi, in a assertion, referred to as Mr. Del Vecchio “a foremost figure in Italian entrepreneurship” and “a good Italian.”

“He introduced the local community of Agordo and the total place into the centre of the entire world of innovation,” Mr. Draghi explained.

Born in Milan on May possibly 22, 1935, Mr. Del Vecchio was elevated in an orphanage. His father, a road peddler of greens, died just before Leonardo was born. His mom, with 4 other young children previously, was not able to care for him.

At 14, he apprenticed as a metallic engraver and then moved on to a workshop that created sections for eyeglass frames. “I commenced as the store boy,” he recalled in a organization online video numerous decades afterwards. “They didn’t connect with me Leonardo, but just ‘boy.’”

In 1961, he moved to Agordo, a modest town in northeastern Italy, to open up his have workshop to make body pieces. The city was providing cost-free land to any person who opened a organization.

He created his fledgling business, Luxottica, on a riverbank with an adjoining residence for his young family. He started his workday at 3 a.m. and experienced little time for anything at all else.

“There have been no kisses, no cuddles,” his eldest daughter, Marisa De Vecchio, recalled in “A Far-Sighted Guy,” the official biography of Mr. Del Vecchio revealed by Luxottica in 1991. “Frankly, we have been terrified of him.”

Mr. Del Vecchio strike upon two innovations that would catapult him around the level of competition.

He insisted on controlling all pieces of the small business, from the production of frame components to their assembly into concluded eyeglasses to their distribution by means of a throughout the world network of retail shops.

He also pioneered the relationship of eyewear and style brands, turning a utilitarian requirement into a manner accessory as appealing as Gucci handbags or Air Jordan sneakers. Beginning with Armani in 1988, around the upcoming two a long time he signed licensing offers with Ralph Lauren, Chanel and a dozen other effectively-acknowledged designers. By elevating eyewear into style, he was equipped to charge charges that at times exceeded $1,000 for a pair of eyeglasses.

As his organization grew, Mr. Del Vecchio bought this kind of set up rivals as Ray-Ban, Persol, Sunglass Hut, Pearle Vision and Oakley.

In 1990, he detailed Luxottica on the New York Stock Trade, a rare move for a midsize European company, giving it accessibility to share cash and financing for an acquisition spree.

An oft-cited example of his determination to grow was his 1995 hostile takeover of the Ohio-centered United States Shoe Company — a conglomerate with five situations the market place price of Luxottica. His only fascination was the company’s financially rewarding Lenscrafters outlets, the greatest optical chain in the United States.

So he purchased the firm for $1.4 billion and offered off all the things apart from Lenscrafters.

Trying to get to reach just about every industry segment, Luxottica sold economical frames in acquiring nations, sometimes even offering absent eyeglasses by charities.

By the time rivals caught on to the breadth of Mr. Del Vecchio’s ambitions, his corporation experienced exceptional licenses with 80 p.c of the major designer manufacturers and the ability to established market prices across the eyeglass marketplace.

Nearing 70, Mr. Del Vecchio announced his retirement in 2004, and turned more than administration obligations to a more youthful executive, Andrea Guerra. But a 10 years later, Mr. Del Vecchio stunned his shareholders by retaking the reins of Luxottica.

Above the following a few a long time, analysts elevated queries about the steadiness of both the business and its founder, as Mr. Del Vecchio ousted Mr. Guerra and then appointed and dismissed three other chief executives.

But out of this chaos arrived Mr. Del Vecchio’s greatest offer. In 2017, at age 81, he declared a merger in between Luxottica and Essilor, the French corporation that made pretty much half of the world’s prescription lenses. He was named executive chairman of EssilorLuxottica with a 32 p.c stake. In a get in touch with to investors disclosing the offer, he hailed it as “the accomplishment of a life time dream.”

For his Lilliputian rivals, the new conglomerate was a nightmare. “The new company will not technically be a monopoly,” famous The Guardian. “But in seven generations of spectacles, there has under no circumstances been nearly anything like it.”

Mr. Del Vecchio was married a few situations to two women of all ages and had 6 small children. With his initial spouse, Luciana Nervo, he had two daughters, Marisa and Paola, and a son, Claudio, now the chief government of Brooks Brothers, the outfits retailer. He experienced an additional son, Leonardo Maria, with his 2nd wife, Nicoletta Zampillo. Soon after divorcing her in 2000, he experienced two sons, Luca and Clemente, with a girlfriend, Sabina Grossi. He remarried Ms. Zampillo in 2010. She survives him, alongside with his 6 small children.

Even in advance of the Essilor merger, Luxottica’s dominance of the marketplace resulted in profits that were being “relatively obscene,” Tim Wu, a professor of legislation at Columbia College, explained to Forbes.

But the merger did not close Mr. Del Vecchio’s ambitions. In 2019, he just about doubled EssilorLuxottica’s retail community to far more than 16,000 shops across the world by buying a vast majority stake in GrandVision, the Dutch optical retailer.

A business statement called the offer “another phase toward our ambition to eradicate lousy eyesight in the environment just before 2050.”

Elisabetta Povoledo contributed reporting from Rome.