Have you ever heard of a company called Luxottica?
We hadn't until we watched a 60 Minutes segment about them recently.
What we learned was pretty shocking!
The details:
- Luxottica is a $20 billion company.
- It makes glasses and sells them.
- 500 million people wear its products.
- 65 million pairs were sold last year.
- It owns Ray Bans and Oakley. It makes glasses for other brands it does not own, including Ralph Lauren, Chanel, Prada, Burbury, Prada, Tiffany, and many more.
- It owns glasses stores Lenscrafters, Pearle Vision, Oliver Peoples, Sunglass Hut and others.
- It owns Eyemed, the nation's most popular vision insurance company.
Because it owns so much of the eyewear industry – from supply chain to distribution – Luxottica is able to charge very high prices for the glasses it sells.
The average frame plus lenses costs $300 at Lenscrafters. That's about 20X more that it costs to make them.
Some people think this is an unfair ripoff.
Some people believe that Luxottica is a monopoly that cannot be defeated.
One company that does not feel this way is New York-based startup Warby Parker, which is on a never-say-die mission to destroy Luxottica.
Our friends at The Daily Muse recently took a trip to Warby Parker's office, and came back with a photo-heavy profile of the company.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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