Simon Jones: Time for a change

When you’ve been bombarded with industry news each day for a decade, there’s not much left to shock you, but this week’s announcement that Kering Eyewear had agreed to take a 100% share stake in Lindberg has left me reeling.

For years, Lindberg has batted away questions about its future and whether it would be bought by a Luxottica or a Safilo. As Tom Davies alludes to in his column (page 8) this week, the rumour mill can sometimes be beneficial, but I never got that impression when it came to Lindberg and after a couple of years in the job, I just stopped asking them about it. Management was stoic about not being for sale. Not now, not ever was the message. I was then told some interesting stories about how these rumours started, like the time when Luxottica founder and former owner, Leonardo del Vecchio and his entourage, decided, uninvited I hasten to add, to visit the Lindberg stand at a trade show in front of Lindberg’s customers from all over the world. It was a pretty sure-fire way of setting tongues wagging and there was very little Lindberg could do about it.