Essilor

Essilor is a French company that manufactured ophthalmic optical equipment. It was formed from a merger between Essel, a small network of eyeglass assembly workshops and Silor, a lens manufacturer in 1972. Essilor operated in 3 business segments optical lenses and instruments, equipment and non-prescription glasses. Since 1992, Essilor had been the world leader in corrective lenses and in 2010, the company operated in over 100 countries by owning 3 R&D centers, 14 manufacturing facilities, 332 prescription laboratories and 12 distribution centers where in this year, many large optical lens manufactures faced financial hardship but Essilor able to earned net profit of 11%. Essilor started with geographical expansion strategy by acquiring manufacturing plants in US, Ireland and Philippines. Later, Essilor transferred part of its lens production to emerging markets and expanded its sales in other countries.

The success of Essilor rested on its production innovation, efficient distribution network and production tooling. In order to meet the demands of customers, Essilor had the largest product offering in the market with more than 580,000 product items. It developed a large number of new products combining different materials, optical surfaces and coatings such as sun protection lenses and computer lenses.

In the ophthalmic lens industry, eyeglasses were distributed through 2 major channels which are the channel for prescription lenses (RX) and another for premade over the counter glasses (OTC). The market size for prescription lenses was larger. User visit an optical eyeglass store to select frames and semi-finished lenses, have their eyes tested and pick up new glasses at the store after the lenses are returned from a prescription laboratory. A prescription laboratory finishes semi-finished lenses based on individual specifications. For OTC market, users can obtain premade glasses immediately.

The global prescription lens industry was organized into 4 distinct...