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MASON, Ohio—Luxottica Retail, a division of Luxottica Group will terminate its relationship with Sears, the troubled retail company, and will close all the remaining Sears Optical locations by February 2020, VMAIL has learned. The company informed associates and affiliated doctors about the decision late last week and yesterday. The company stated, “Sears Optical has continued to operate under challenging circumstances. As a result, we have made the difficult decision to terminate our agreement with Sears and close all remaining Sears Optical locations.

“We are extremely proud of the passion and commitment our Sears Optical team has shown for their customers over the years. We hope to deliver the same high level of service to those customers in another Luxottica retail location. Our team is working hard to find opportunities for our impacted associates and affiliated doctors within the Luxottica family.”

A Luxottica spokesperson told VMAIL, “The company is already identifying roles for impacted associates and ODs within LensCrafters, Pearle Vision and Target Optical.”

The spokesperson noted, “We currently operate 115 Sears Optical locations, 30 of which were already planning to close on Feb. 1, 2020, due to the host Sears’ prior decision. So we made the decision to close the remaining 85 locations on the same timeline.”

The agreement to operate optical departments within Sears stores was one established with the former Cole Vision company. When Luxottica acquired the Cole Licensed Brands business in 2004, the company extended the relationship.