Leonardo Del Vecchio, chairman of the world's largest producer and retailer of sunglasses and prescription glasses Essilor Luxottica, died at age 87 on June 27, 2022.
Del Vecchio founded Luxottica in 1961, at age 25. Under his leadership, it acquired Sunglass Hut, Ray-Ban, and Oakley and grew to make glasses for virtually every brand including Bulgari and Chanel.
Born in Milan on May 22, 1935, Mr. Del Vecchio was raised in an orphanage. His father, a street peddler of vegetables, died before Leonardo was born. His mother, with four other children already, was unable to care for him.
He began apprenticing at a car and eyewear parts factory at age 14, where he once severed part of his finger, to put himself through design school.
In 1961, he moved to Agordo, a small town in northeastern Italy, to open his own workshop to make frame parts. The town was offering free land to anybody who opened a business.
He built his fledgling enterprise, Luxottica, on a riverbank with an adjoining home for his young family. He began his workday at 3 a.m. and had little time for anything else.
He pioneered the marriage of eyewear and fashion brands, turning a utilitarian necessity into a fashion accessory as desirable as Gucci handbags or Air Jordan sneakers. Beginning with Armani in 1988, over the next two decades he signed licensing deals with Ralph Lauren, Chanel, and a dozen other well-known designers. By elevating eyewear into fashion, he was able to charge prices that sometimes exceeded $1,000 for a pair of glasses.
In 1990, he listed Luxottica on the New York Stock Exchange, a rare move for a midsize European company, giving it access to share
Nearing 70, Mr. Del Vecchio announced his retirement in 2004 and turned over management duties to a younger executive, Andrea Guerra. But a decade later, Mr. Del Vecchio surprised his shareholders by retaking the reins of Luxottica.
In 2017, at age 81, he announced a merger between Luxottica and Essilor, the French company that made almost half of the world’s prescription lenses. He was named executive chairman of Essilor Luxottica with a 32 percent stake. In a call to investors disclosing the deal, he hailed it as “the achievement of a lifetime dream.”
In 2019, he almost doubled Essilor Luxottica’s retail network to more than 16,000 outlets across the globe by acquiring a majority stake in GrandVision, the Dutch optical retailer.
Del Vecchio, the 52nd richest person in the world on Forbes ' billionaires ranks, was worth roughly $25 billion at the time of his death; his wife & 6 children will reportedly split his vast fortune.
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