Ray Ban, Pearle, Oakley: sooner or later they were all swallowed up by the eyewear conglomerate Luxottica, founded in 1961 by Leonardo Del Vecchio. The Milanese changed thinking about glasses and sunglasses, which he did not consider a necessary evil, but a fashion item.
Frames made Del Vecchio a multi-billionaire. At the time of his death, his wealth was estimated at around $27 billion. This makes the Del Vecchio family the second-richest dynasty in Italy, after the Agnelli family, owners of Fiat.
But unlike the Fiat heirs, Leonardo Del Vecchio was a self-made man, whose life course appeals to the imagination. At the age of 7, his mother sent little Leonardo, her fourth child, to an orphanage. His father, a street vendor of fruit and vegetables, had died shortly before his birth.
“I have to work and have no one to look after him,” she wrote in a letter to the orphanage, that newspaper Corriere della Sera quotes. “I’d rather let him take you in than roam the streets during the day, so he gets a better education.” In interviews, Del Vecchio later said he only remembered the sadness of the orphanage.
Origin of Luxottica
He left the boarding school at the age of 14. In post-war Milan he found a job as an errand boy, in a workshop for eyewear parts. Through evening classes and double shifts, including as a metal worker, Del Vecchio managed to open his own parts factory in his twenties. He was now married and the father of two children. The municipality of Agordo, a remote mountain village in Veneto, offered him free space to prevent the exodus.
Luxottica grew steadily. Later on, the company also started producing its own eyewear and from the 1980s Del Vecchio increasingly looked beyond the borders of Italy, where Luxottica started buying up international eyewear brands such as Ray-Ban and Oakley.
The company also produces eyewear for numerous luxury brands such as Armani, Bulgari and Ralph Lauren. In 1990, Del Vecchio brought his Luxottica to the Wall Street stock exchange, ten years later a move to the Milan stock exchange followed.
Distance from politics
Del Vecchio was an atypical Italian magnate, who has six children but did not create a family succession. He also kept his distance from the spotlight. He was completely unknown until 1986, when the press more or less accidentally “discovered” him, because he was awarded a knighthood.
In 1991, the shadow was finally done with, as Del Vecchio made headlines as the richest man in the country. But while fellow tycoon Silvio Berlusconi was just making his political entrance in those years, Del Vecchio stayed far from the backroom of Rome.
He also maintained his distance from politics in his later life. When he heard that managers were busy arranging a visit by President Giorgio Napolitano (2006-2015) to the factory, he blocked it, according to left-wing newspaper Dominican Republic with the words: ‘I ask no favors from politics.’
The newspaper therefore labels the entrepreneur as an exception that confirms the rule. His life story does not prove, as the majority of politicians and media like to suggest, that Italian capitalism is meritocratic, according to the newspaper.
‘Del Vecchio is an example for today and tomorrow’, wrote MEP Paolo Gentiloni. Prime Minister Mario Draghi praised him for “bringing Agordo and the whole country to the center of the world of innovation.”
Dominican Republic disagrees, characterizing Del Vecchio’s success primarily as a fluke, “of a small, humble eyeglass maker from Agordo, who spoke not a word of English and only remembered from the Wall Street IPO that the risotto he ate after the ceremony was very tasty.’
repent
Furthermore, there is hardly a cross word in Italy about the worldwide spectacle king, who decided to return to the top of Luxottica ten years after his retirement in 2004. At the age of 81, he then closed one of his most important deals: the merger with the French company Essilor in 2017.
In the international media, Luxottica often received strong criticism, because the company controls such a large part of the market that, according to some, it has a monopoly position, which makes prices unnecessarily high. After the merger with Essilor, the company will control approximately 30 percent of the market.
Del Vecchio himself, who had his six children by three women, mentioned only one point in interviews that made him regret it: ‘I have only now realized that by devoting myself completely to the factory and colleagues, I have little time with my children. spent.’
3 x Leonardo Del Vecchio
A month ago, Del Vecchio had a meeting in Milan with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. The social media company is collaborating with Luxottica on smart glasseswhich should provide access to Zuckerberg’s desired ‘metaverse’, a virtual reality.
Del Vecchio’s six children each inherit 12.5 percent of the shares of the eyewear empire. The remaining quarter goes to his widow Nicoletta Zampillo, whom he married twice. The management of the conglomerate, which employs 150,000 people, remains in the hands of the managers.
Since last year, Luxottica has also taken over the Dutch eyewear trade by acquiring GrandVision (owner of Pearle and EyeWish) from investment company HAL for about 7 billion euros.