In focus: Essilor shares its growing pains

We all know what happens to the big bad wolf in that story. I don’t want to be the wolf.’ Essilor Europe president Bernhard Nuesser was in philosophical mood at a specially arranged press briefing to discuss the company’s expansion into online retail in London last week.

‘For over 150 years, Essilor has been a partner of independent opticians, we do not want to do anything to jeopardise that,’ said Nuesser, who had flown in from Switzerland where he had addressed 200 opticians on the same topic.

Essilor has a problem that it never envisaged. The optician businesses it supplies have become increasingly uncomfortable with its expansion in a sector that many consider to be the very competition that threatens their livelihoods and has done so for well over a decade.