How Luxottica Hurts Us
Posted on October 30, 2008
Filed Under Luxottica | 3 Comments
Luxottica is the root of all evil in the broken American optical industry — and they do it from the home base in Milan, Italy (and the swanky new Luxottica Retail headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio). As they gobble up retailer after retailer, they’re quite effectively removing almost all of the resistance to global domination and price-fixing. They are cornering this very lucrative market.
Think I’m exaggerating? Take a look at the ever-growing list of Luxottica Brands from manufacturing (Oakley, Ray-Ban…), retail (LensCrafters, Pearle, Target…) and insurance (EyeMed).
Looking beyond the hand-crafted-by-Swiss-eunuchs type frames that appear in the couture eyeglasses shops of the major cities, the typical eyeglasses frame is little more than a few dollars worth of plastic, metal and tiny hardware with a few moments of human manufacturing and packaging time. Then why when I walk into a LensCrafters do these fancy plastic tags and diminutive stickers carry such outrageous prices? There are only a couple of reasons but the most important one is greed – more on that over here. (the others are that worthless brand name, the store’s fancy carpeting and lights, and the salary of that guy over there in the white lab coat — oh and the lab coats themselves).
A few of the ways Luxottica hurts us:
- They make us hesitant to keep our prescriptions current – every time we get our eyes checked we know there is a $300 or $400 “new eyeglasses fee” attached to it. This keeps us in that old, outdated prescription longer — if the single pair of glasses we own holds up, that is. When it doesn’t we’re forced back into their little game, unless you’re handy and patient — or informed.
- They’ve duped us into thinking that $400 is “reasonable” for glasses — all of the optical stores have benefited from this. I’ve watched prices creep up from $100 to $400 in 20 years (twice the rate of inflation during that timeframe. All of this increase is for what? Most of these framesa are made at nearly slave wages in China.
- Massively overpriced lenses and coatings — More than half of the expense in a pair of glasses is in the lenses, and that’s as it should be. The frame is little more than the mediocre bread in the vision correction sandwich. The problem is, they’re charging aged prosciutto rates for bologna. Featherwates? Please. I was (over)sold on the hi-index thing for years. I have a moderate prescription (-4.00ish) and I haven’t gone with hi-index lenses on a modern, or plastic frames in two years. There is no need on smaller lenses.
- Their “insurance” is becoming more and more pervasive and it’s costing you — like most optical insurance, there really isn’t much to it. Essentially, EyeMed is little more than a marketing organization pointing you at specific retailers. They tell you that you’re going to get a “deal”, but it’s really only the beginning of a big bait and switch in which you get to choose between two less than great options.
Much more to come.
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[...] How Luxottica Hurts Us [...]
And who might you be? Who sponsors this website? I hunted and hunted and couldn’t find a thing.
You wouldn’t be a competitor, would you?
@paul,
You’re no private eye are you? New to the internet? Perhaps if you’d have looked at that big “About” link at the top right, you’d have found what you’re looking for. I’m not shrinking violet with this.