Leonardo Del Vecchio, the Italian billionaire who rose from poverty in Dickensian to build a giant global company that helped transform the fragmented, shabby glass industry into a regulated business. fashion direction, passed away Monday in Milan. He was 87 years old.
His death is announced by the company, now known as EssilorLuxottica. No cause has been given. A company spokesman said he passed away at San Raffaele hospital.
Although largely unnoticed outside of the industry, Luxottica, as the company has long been known, has gained as much of an edge in the low-tech eyewear business as Google and Amazon have in them.
Produces glasses for luxury brands such as Ray-Ban, Armani, Bulgari, Chanel and Brooks Brothers, and sells them through corporate-owned retail chains such as Pearle Vision, Lenscrafters and Sunglass Hut, the company which Mr. Del Vecchio started in his home. Agordo, Italy, more than 60 years ago, became the largest eyewear manufacturer in the world, with factories in Europe, Asia and the Americas.
And he became one of the richest men in Italy. Forbes magazine ranked him and his family 52nd on this year’s list of the world’s richest people, estimating their net worth at $27.3 billion.
In a statement, Prime Minister Mario Draghi called Mr Del Vecchio “a leading figure in Italian entrepreneurship” and “a great Italian”.
Mr. Draghi said: “He made the Agordo community and the whole country the center of the innovation world.
Born in Milan on May 22, 1935, Mr. Del Vecchio was raised in an orphanage. His father, a street vendor, passed away before Leonardo was born. His mother, along with four other children, was unable to care for him.
At the age of 14, he apprenticed as a metal engraver and later moved into a workshop manufacturing parts for eyeglass frames. “I started out as a sales guy,” he recalled in a company video years later. “They don’t call me Leonardo, but simply ‘boy’.”
In 1961, he moved to Agordo, a small town in northeastern Italy, to open his own frame parts workshop. The town is offering free land to anyone who opens a business.
He built his fledgling business, Luxottica, on a riverbank with a semi-detached house for his young family. He starts his workday at 3am and doesn’t have much time for other things.
“No kisses, no cuddles,” his eldest daughter, Marisa De Vecchio, recalls in “A Far-Sighted Man,” Del Vecchio’s official biography published by Luxottica in 1991.” To be honest, we were very scared of him. “
Mr. Del Vecchio has come up with two initiatives that could propel him through the competition.
He insists on controlling all parts of the business, from manufacturing frame parts to assembling them into finished eyeglasses to distributing them through a worldwide network of retail stores. world.
He is also a pioneer in combining eyewear and fashion brands, turning a handy essential into a coveted fashion accessory like a Gucci handbag or Air Jordan sneakers. Beginning with Armani in 1988, over the next two decades he signed licensing deals with Ralph Lauren, Chanel and dozens of other famous designers. By elevating eyeglasses to fashion, he was able to charge prices sometimes in excess of $1,000 for a pair of glasses.
As the business grew, Mr. Del Vecchio acquired long-standing rivals such as Ray-Ban, Persol, Sunglass Hut, Pearle Vision and Oakley.
In 1990, he listed Luxottica on the New York Stock Exchange, a rare move for a mid-tier European company, giving it access to equity capital and financing an acquisition. .
A prime example of his determination to expand was his hostile takeover in 1995 of the Ohio-based American Shoe Corporation – a conglomerate with a market value five times that of Luxottica. His only concern was the profitable Lenscrafters stores of the company, the largest optical store chain in the United States.
Therefore, Mr bought the company for $1.4 billion and sold out everything except Lenscrafters.
Seeking to reach every market segment, Luxottica sold inexpensive frames in developing countries, sometimes even donating glasses through charities.
By the time competitors grasped Del Vecchio’s ambitions, his company had exclusive licenses to 80% of the major designer brands and had market pricing power across the eyewear industry.
Nearly 70 years old, Mr. Del Vecchio announced his retirement in 2004 and handed over management duties to a younger executive, Andrea Guerra. But a decade later, Mr. Del Vecchio surprised his shareholders by taking back Luxottica’s power.
Over the next three years, analysts questioned the stability of both the company and its founder, as Del Vecchio ousted Guerra, then appointed and removed three other executives.
But out of this chaos came Mr. Del Vecchio’s biggest deal. In 2017, at the age of 81, he announced Fusion between Luxottica and Essilor, the French company that produces almost half of the world’s prescription lenses. He was appointed executive chairman of EssilorLuxottica with a 32% stake. In a call for investors to disclose the deal, he hailed it as “the fruit of a lifelong dream.”
For Lilliputian rivals, the new corporation is a nightmare. “Technically, the new company will not be a monopoly” The Guardian notes. “But in seven centuries of spectacles, there has never been anything quite like it.”
Mr. Del Vecchio was married three times to two women and had six children. With his first wife, Luciana Nervo, he had two daughters, Marisa and Paola, and a son, Claudio, now a Brooks Brothers CEO, clothing retailer. He had another son, Leonardo Maria, with his second wife, Nicoletta Zampillo. After his divorce from her in 2000, he had two sons, Luca and Clemente, with a girlfriend, Sabina Grossi. He remarried Ms. Zampillo in 2010. She still lives with him, along with his six children.
Even before the Essilor merger, Luxottica’s market dominance led to “relatively confusing” profits, Tim Wu, a law professor at Columbia University, told Forbes.
But the merger did not end Mr. Del Vecchio’s ambitions. In 2019, he nearly doubled EssilorLuxottica’s retail network to more than 16,000 stores globally by acquiring a majority stake in GrandVision, a Dutch optical retailer.
A company statement called the deal “another step towards our ambition to eliminate poor vision in the world before 2050.”
Elisabetta Povoledo Reporting contributions from Rome.
