Essilor executives spoke about the company’s pending merger with Luxottica and other strategic initiatives at press conference during VEE. (L to R) Eric Leonard, Daniel Liberman, Howard Purcell, Rick Gadd and Carl Bracy.
NEW YORK—Essilor of America’s top management briefed members of the optical industry’s press about the company’s pending merger with Luxottica and other strategic initiatives at a breakfast meeting last Friday at Vision Expo East.

EOA president Eric Leonard said that combining the two optical giants will enable Essilor to focus more resources on helping millions of people worldwide suffering from uncorrected refractive error, myopia and other ocular conditions. “We call it ‘Giving Vision a Louder Voice,’” said Leonard. “We want to improve the quality of eyewear so we can give people the right solutions for their vision problems.”

Leonard said that Essilor would intensify its efforts to communicate with consumers about vision issues through advertising and social media. “We have over 100 million unique visitors online, and that is enabling us to move more online traffic to independents’ websites.”

Daniel Liberman, senior vice president of strategic initiatives, said Essilor and Luxottica will work jointly to improve supply chain efficiencies. A key goal is to minimize the turnaround time for patients when they order eyeglasses from independent ECPs. “We’re looking at how we can change the way we work with our independent partners to have a world class supply chain,” Liberman said.

Howard Purcell, OD, senior vice president, customer development, said by combining their organizations, Luxottica and Essilor “can grow the industry faster.” He cited wearable technology as a product category that could potentially benefit from the merger. “We both have a lot of IP in wearables which could create an opportunity for ECPs to offer the technology in their offices.”

Purcell also noted that the merger would enable the two companies to better utilize big data, adding, “He who has big data wins.”