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  • 2016-09-20 (xsd:date)
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  • Does Luxottica Own 80% of the Eyeglass Industry? (en)
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  • On 14 September 2016, the College Humor web site published a segment of popular truTV debunking show Adam Ruins Everything about The Conspiracy Behind Your Glasses, describing how the Luxottica conglomerate owns 80 percent of eyeglass brands, most optometry chains, and the second-largest vision care insurer in the United States: Unlike most videos of this nature, Adam Ruins Everything provides links to sources for their statements. The video's primary claim was that Luxottica controls 80 percent of the eyeglass market, which was supported by reference to a 2014 Forbes blog post. That blog post cited a 2012 Forbes, which in turn offered up the statistic without citation: Without additional documentation it was difficult to authenticate the claim that Luxottica controls 80 percent of glasses and sunglasses brands, as both cited Forbes pieces were published by contributors and not the magazine itself. Variables such as the passage of time (four years between the claim's first uncited appearance in Forbes and its reiteration in the September 2016 video), ongoing increases in e-commerce, and the difficulty of establishing a baseline against which to compare Luxottica's market share versus those pf innumerable small competitors made verification problematic. Much of the interest in Luxottica's retail dominance came from a segment aired on the CBS 60 Minutes news magazine program in 2012, but that segment also did not provide a number for the proportion of eyeglass and sunglass brands that fall under Luxottica's umbrella (compared to those of competitors such as Walmart, Costco, Zenni Optical, or Warby Parker). In May 2015, Business of Fashion provided more recent figures for Luxottica's European sales performance, contrasted with those of the next-largest competitor, the Safilo group: Rumblings of discontent about Luxottica's increasingly firm grip on the eyewear market were not new in 2016. A 2013 Yahoo! Finance article examined whether the brand's stranglehold on optometry chains inhibited patients from obtaining complete prescriptions and taking their business elsewhere: Lynn brought interest into Luxottica's market dominance to the fore in his 2011 book Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction: In May 2011, Luxottica made headlines in California for controversial business practices criticized as a bid to expand control of the eyewear market: A 2008 article in advocacy periodical Consumers Digest maintained a critical view of Luxottica, describing several mergers and buyouts and a less-than-flattering assessment of the Luxottica's practices: In 2015, New York State Senator Chuck Schumer proposed changes to the FTC's Eyeglass Rule of 1992, enacted to ensure that patients were not locked into purchasing overpriced glasses because of monopolies. In a 27 September 2015 press release, Schumer's office cited the 80 percent figure for Luxoticca's market share: On 30 September 2015, industry publication Optometry Times covered the same issue and suggested that Senator Schumer was misinformed: Luxottica provided a September 2015 statement to Optometry Times that reiterated the (less than) 20 percent market share figure cited by Consumers Digest: Luxottica themselves sent us the following statement: Regardless of the actual figure, much of Adam Ruins Everything's assessment of Luxottica's market dominance was accurate, including the conglomerate's ownership of several prominent optometry chains and the second-largest vision care insurer in the United States. However, it is difficult to measure Luxottica's relative dominance against the innumerable independent optometry practices, large-scale retailers such as Walmart and Costco, and popular online retailers such Zenni Optical and Warby Parker. It is true that avoiding Luxottica's products can be difficult in mass retail environments, but patients with a complete eyeglass prescription are still able to obtain eyeglasses and sunglasses through other companies. (en)
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