Luxottica sales up by 21.6 per cent in 1999

Chairman Leonardo Del Vecchio said in a statement on Reuters that the integration of Ray-Ban sunglasses, which the company bought the rights to last June (News, May 7), was almost complete by the end of 1999. 'Our manufacturing and sales activities will begin to benefit from the synergies generated by the Ray-Ban acquisition,' he said. 'As a result, we fully expect to meet the projections we made in connection with the Ray-Ban acquisition to post consolidated sales for the fiscal year 2000 of over 4 trillion lire, with a net margin of at least 10 per cent.' Luxottica, which took on the Revo, Arnette and Killer Loop brands in the Ray-Ban deal, also signed an agreement with French fashion house Chanel for the design, production and distribution of a new range of sunglasses and frames, which were launched at Silmo, the Parisian optical event in October. Its manufacturing/wholesale sales for the year, including Ray-Ban sales for the six months from July to December, rose 38.5 per cent in North America and 23.5 per cent in the rest of the world. Excluding sales at Ray-Ban, group net sales for the year rose 13.7 per cent to 3.387 trillion lire while frames sold rose 8.4 per cent. Net sales for 1999 at LensCrafters, Luxottica's fully-owned North American subsidiary, rose 13.1 per cent to $1.26bn. Like-for-like growth for 1999 was 6.9 per cent year-on-year, for what is believed to be the largest retail optical group in the world with 861 sites.