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Comment by rgbrenner | Hacker News Reader

Luxottica offered to buy Oakley, and Oakley refused.. said it was never going to happen.

So Luxottica stopped distributing Oakley's products in Sunglass Hut, etc.. which deprived Oakley of the majority of it's revenue, causing their stock to crash.

Oakley then accepted a buyout offer from Luxottica.

So to answer your question, why are there not better Luxottica competitors.. because when someone produces a good product, they'll become large enough to attract Luxottica's attention...

If Luxottica controls the distribution channel.. what options do you have if they want to play hardball? No good ones.

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> If Luxottica controls the distribution channel

One could have argued similarly for Gillette. Then Dollar Shave Club went direct to consumers.

Likewise, I referenced an independent distributor who stocked non-Luxottica frames. Margins in this business are wide enough that economies of scale, alone, are an insufficient explanation.

Gillette doesn't own Walgreens. That's the big difference here.

Does luxottica own Walgreens?

Do you buy brand name sunglasses at Walgreens or walmart?

No, but they do own LensCrafters, Sunglass Hut, Apex by Sunglass Hut, Pearle Vision, Sears Optical, Target Optical, and Glasses.com...

Unilever has owned DSC for over a year.

That kind of behaviour really should bring the anti-trust regulators knocking on your door sharpish. Anyone know why it didn't happen?

Because the US has not believed in anti-trust regulations in some time, especially for snakes who don't hesitate to pay (I don't remember if it was Last Week Tonight or Adam Ruins Everything which played clips of the Luxotica CEO, that bloke talks and behaves exactly as if he'd order a pallet of cement blocks and ask for a discount).

Did Oakley have their retail outlets at that time? Or did that come after the Luxottica purchase?

When I bought my Oakleys last year, most of my research was by browsing in the two Oakley retail stores in my city. Some was from browsing at surfwear stores (as far as I know, Luxottica don't own Rip Curl or City Beach).

A small portion of my shopping research was on my (Luxottica-owned) optometrist's website, but I ended up buying from the Oakley Factory Outlet store.

This article from 2007 (after the merger) says they had 250 stores out of 11,000 retail outlets that carried their products

https://seekingalpha.com/article/40333-oakley-luxottica-grou...

They don't own Warby Parker. I bought two pairs of progressive lens glasses from them. Great experience.

Interesting. I never heard that. I have been a big Oakley fan for a long time because I felt they did make nice lenses and sold them when I worked at a running store in college.

Competitors have mostly focused on alternative or direct-to-consumer distribution. So instead of picking out frames at your optician's office (where everything is Luxottica), you just get your prescription and then either go online or go to a store that direct-sells non-Luxottica.

We need Bezos to enter the market.

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