Eyewear Industry Research Articles

Merger of complements: Empirical evidence from the eyewear industry

We analyze the effects of a merger between sellers of perfect complements in an oligopolistic industry. Relying on a unique dataset listing every pair of glasses sold by almost 400 independent opticians in Germany, we study the effects of the 2018 merger between the global leading producer of ophthalmic lenses and the global leading producer of eyewear frames. We show that the retail prices of components produced by the merging parties decreased with the merger, relatively to the prices of components produced by competing firms. This is, according to the theory, due to a reduction in double-marginalization resulting from the internalization of externalities after the merger. We also find that the relative price decrease is asymmetric across component markets, in line with our theory.

Design language

Optician's series on female creatives in the eyewear industry continues with Zoe Cosby interviewing Danielle Rattray

Taking the industry by storm

In the first part of a series celebrating British female talent in the eyewear industry, Zoe Cosby talks to Anna Lewis of Ffin Eyewear

Chemical Recycling of Cellulose Acetate Eyewear Industry Waste by Hydrothermal Treatment

Chemical Recycling of Cellulose Acetate Eyewear Industry Waste by Hydrothermal Treatment

Eyewear companies report 2023 growth

Andrew McCarthy-McClean reports on the full-year financial results published by the eyewear industry's giants

Spatial risk assessment for climate proofing of economic activities: The case of Belluno Province (North-East Italy)

Recent advancements in spatial risk assessment methodologies, particularly those incorporating GIS and economic evaluations, have significantly enhanced our ability to assess and manage risks associated with natural disasters. Entrepreneurs, investors, and public administrations need information about climate change risks for effective planning and decision making. To move from generic global or national projections about climate change scenarios, towards more actionable information on climate risks for socioeconomic agents, the three dimensions of risk (Hazard, Exposure and Vulnerability) must be quantified and mapped with the involvement of stakeholders. In this study, spatial indicators, tailored to the social and ecological systems of interest and co-designed with the key stakeholders are aggregated into sectoral risk indexes quantified in economic terms. Climate risk indexes were calculated and mapped for the four key economic sectors of the study area of the Belluno Province (Italian Alps): summer tourism, winter sports and events, eyewear industry, and electricity supply. Stakeholders were involved during the assessment to share knowledge, data and needs and to provide expert judgments on intermediate and final results. Outputs include a series of maps and statistical summaries, highlighting future trends of climate related risks, their spatial variability within the area and the estimated levels of uncertainty. Estimates on expected changes of future damages with constant Exposure and Vulnerability, provided socioeconomic agents with simple and clear messages about how their activities could suffer or benefit from climate change in the future.

Valorisation of eyewear bioplastics through HTC and anaerobic digestion: Preliminary results

Bioplastics are increasingly replacing traditional plastics in many sectors, but the legislative and operative frameworks for their disposal remain unclear: they should be collected and treated together with the organic fraction of municipal solid waste (OFMSW), but often do not biodegrade satisfactorily in the plants that treat OFMSW. This work focuses on a type of cellulose diacetate employed in the eyewear industry to analyse hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) as a pre-treatment before anaerobic digestion (AD). The results show that HTC can hydrolyse this bioplastic even at moderate temperatures, reaching an almost total dissolution in the liquid phase at 210 °C and, at higher temperatures, producing hydrochar. When the HTC slurry obtained at 210 °C is fed to mesophilic or thermophilic AD, both the amount and the production rate of biogas are enhanced compared to the raw bioplastic. In particular, in thermophilic conditions, the amount of produced biogas undergoes at least a threefold increase compared to the untreated cellulose diacetate. Thus, this work confirms that a prior HTC step may be a suitable approach to enhance the disposal and energy recovery of bioplastics through AD.

Research on Brand Strategy Planning and Operation of BD Glasses Company

The 21st century, in the process of economic internationalization, the golden age of competition between China and domestic brands in the eyewear industry has arrived. The competition within the market is becoming more and more fierce, homogenization is becoming more and more serious, and consumer selectivity is gradually increasing. It is an urgent problem for the eyewear industry to create products with good reputation and do a good job in brand strategic layout. This paper takes BD Eyewear Company, which is the largest and classic eyewear marketing company at home and abroad, as an example. First of all, it systematically reviews the theories and literature related to the enterprise brand strategy, and uses PEST analysis method to analyze its macro environment, and summarizes the above analysis methods. Then according to the way of questionnaire survey, comprehensive and systematic study of the enterprise brand strategic planning and operation, so as to understand the key points of the success of the enterprise brand strategic planning and operation, so as to reasonably sum up the main problems faced in the process of the enterprise brand strategic planning and operation; Finally, according to the conclusion of the above study, through the application of EFE and IFE evaluation matrix to judge the brand planning suitable for BD glasses company, and for the overall strategy to provide some targeted measures and suggestions, BD glasses set the important strategic significance, enterprise brand value positioning and conception and BD glasses long-term vision planning, etc. In order to achieve the overall implementation of BD glasses company brand strategic planning requirements.

The Human-Centric SMED

The Human-Centric SMED (H-SMED) is an evolution of the classical methodology introduced by Shingo to manage the setup process, which is particularly suitable for companies where the setup involves activities with high human content, that can be hardly transformed into external operations to be performed during the machine uptime. The H-SMED integrates Industry 4.0 tools, as the MES Data Analysis, Lean Management and Ergonomics with a new attention to the centrality of workers, in order to guide the transition towards the next Industry 5.0. The H-SMED methodology is developed into four phases, devolved to: (1) understanding the changeover process; (2) identifying potential improvements; (3) moving from proposal to practice; (4) training and control, in a continuous improvement cycle. The case study of a world-wide known company in the fashion eyewear industry is proposed to validate the framework, reporting a 44% reduction of setup duration.

In Focus: Inspecs marches on

Andrew McClean finds out what Inspecs’ latest acquisition means for one of the eyewear industry's fastest growing businesses

Automatic Defect Inspection for Coated Eyeglass Based on Symmetrized Energy Analysis of Color Channels

Nowadays, eyeglassesare used for vision correction as well as in the fashion industry. Eyeglasses have become more expensive and the eyewear industry has grown rapidly, thereby requiring the development of advanced coating technologies. However, defect detection by visual inspection in the manufacturing process of eyeglass coatings is difficult. To solve this problem, we propose the coated eyeglass defect detection system framework based on machine vision for real-time inspection. First, we locate and extract regions of interest (ROI) ofthe coated eyeglass by adopting cross-projection based on symmetrizedenergy analysis. Next, we propose an efficient method based on the symmetrized energy analysis of color channelsto enhance defectsin each color channel of the ROI of the coated eyeglass. Then, we adoptsymmetrized cross-projection energy analysis for locating defective areas inside the ROI of the coated eyeglass. Finally, we compare the defect detection resultsfor the coated eyeglass with the standard manufacturingquality. An experiment is conducted using real data collected froma Taiwanese eyeglass factory to validate the performance of the proposed framework. This framework achieves a 100% defect detection rate, demonstrating that it is valid and useful for inspecting coated eyeglasses in industries.

Combining aesthetics and engineering specifications for fashion-driven product design: A case study on spectacle frames

The successful combination of aesthetic and engineering specifications is a long-standing issue. The literature reports some examples where this problem was achieved developing tools to support the automatic generation of new product shapes, embedding and linking predefined rule-sets. Notwithstanding, these kinds of tools are effective if and only if the relations among these specifications are known. Other complementary strategies act upstream by building a common ground: they aid in the formalisation of these specifications, fostering the use of a shared language and the same level of detail. This paper lies in between the previous approaches since its purpose is the description of a strategy to formalise the relations among aesthetic and engineering specifications and whose validities are not affected by the product variability. Indeed, fashion-driven products are subject to continuous innovations and changes. Therefore the identification of these predefined rule-sets is challenging. In detail, the paper objective is to build a high-level and long-lasting formalisation of these relations, based on topological and functional rules. To demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach, we developed a case study in the eyewear industry. We started considering the spectacle-frame functionality and derived the high-level formulation linking aesthetic and engineering specifications. We used this formulation to generate an abstraction of the frame geometry, i.e., an archetype, to be used as a reference for the design of new collections. We implemented the archetype through a Matlab script, and we translated it into a design tool, to wit an Excel spreadsheet. The validity of both the archetype and the tool has been tested, in collaboration with an eyewear manufacturer, designing and manufacturing two new models of frames.

Explore technology innovation and intelligence for IoT (Internet of Things) based eyewear technology

Advances in wireless Internet and mobile communications devices have driven significant development in the Internet of Things (IoT), bringing a stream of innovative technologies and services. This study explores the technology innovation and intelligence for IoT (internet of things) based eyewear technology. This study proposes a two-stage patent analysis based on the quality function development (QFD) method which adopts customer requirement and technology viewpoints to explore key technologies. This methodology can recognize the specific technologies with development potential in the eyewear industry, and identify holders of key relevant patents. This study finds that consumers value functions including motion tracking, reminders, eye state detection, and non-eye disease detection. Key technologies with development potential for satisfying customer demand include eyewear, communications protocols, and sensors. Thus, embedding micron-scale sensors directly into contact lenses to monitor user physiological data can satisfy customer demand and is considered as emerging technology in the smart eyewear industry. Furthermore, patent portfolios of these technologies vary among different countries and regions, with the US and EU focusing on eye tracking, motion tracking, and identity verification, while China focuses on eye fatigue detection, distance measurement, and wireless frequency technologies. Visualizations of overall research results can benefit eyewear-related patent holders, eyewear manufacturers and smart wearable manufacturers to build their patent portfolio strategies on the basis of regional or country considerations.

An inspection system to master dimensional and technological variability of fashion-related products: A case study in the eyewear industry

Innovation of fashion-related products implies the continuous search for new and appealing shapes and materials in a short period of time due to the seasonality of the market. The design and manufacturing of such products have to deal with a dimensional variability as a consequence of the new shapes. An additional difficulty concerns properly forecasting the technological behaviour of the new materials in relation to the manufacturing process phases. The control of dimensional variations requires time and resource intensive activities. Human's manual and visual inspection solutions are more common than automatic ones for performing such control, where skilled operators are typically the only ones capable of immediately facing non-standard situations. The full control of such variations is even more subtle and mandatory in the field of spectacles, which are fashion-related products and also medical devices. This paper describes an inspection system developed to monitor the dimensional variations of a spectacles frame during the manufacturing process. We discuss the methodological approach followed to develop the system, and the experimental campaign carried out to test its effectiveness. The system intends to be an alternative to current inspection practices used in the field, and also to provide a methodological approach to enable engineers to systematically study the correlations existing among the frame main functional and dimensional parameters, the material behaviour and the technological variables of the manufacturing process. Hence, the system can be considered a method to systematically acquire and formalise new knowledge. The inspection system consists of a workbench equipped with four high-quality commercial webcams that are used to acquire orthogonal-view images of the front of the frame. A software module controls the system and allows the automatic processing of the images acquired, in order to extract the dimensional data of the frame which are relevant for the analysis. A case study is discussed to demonstrate the system performances.

한국안광학회지 게재논문의 연구동향 분석

목적: 한국안광학회지에 게재된 논문을 대상으로 안경광학의 연구동향을 분석하여 향후 연구를 위한 기초자료로 활용하고자 하였다. 방법: 창간호부터 2014년까지 한국안광학회지에 게재된 990편의 논문을 대상으로 일반적 특성과 연구자 특성, 연구 특성, 연구동향을 통계분석 하였다. 결과: 게재논문의 저자 수는 2인과 3인이 각각 26.8%로 가장 많았다. 주 저자 소속지역은 전라지역이 31.3%로 가장 많았고 소속대학의 학제는 4년제가 43.0%로 가장 많았다. 연구방법은 검사가 40.9%로 가장 많았으며 연구주제는 검안학분야가 29.8%로 가장 많았다. 저자 수에 따라 주저자 소속대학의 학제, 연구방법에서 유의한 차이가 나타났다(p=0.000). 주 저자 소속대학의 학제에 따라 연구방법에서 유의한 차이가 나타났다(p=0.000). 연구주제에 따라 주 저자 소속대학 학제, 연구방법(p=0.000)에서 유의한 차이가 나타났다. 기간구분(1996~2004, 2005~2014)에 따라 유의한 차이가 나타났는데 저자 수는 증가하였으며, 4년제 대학교 소속 저자가 많아졌다(p=0.000). 검안학과 콘택트렌즈분야의 논문이 증가하였고 연구비수혜도 증가하였다(p<0.005). 또한 서울, 충청지역의 주 저자가 증가하였다(p=0.000). 결론: 안경광학 학문의 발전을 위해서 연구자의 층을 넓히고 다양한 연구주제를 다루어야 하며 안경업계와 학계의 공동노력, 해외협력이 필요하다. Purpose: This study aimed to analyze the research trends of Ophthalmic Optic by targeting the papers published in the Journal of Korean Ophthalmic Optics Society and serve it as a basis for future researches. Methods: This study was conducted through a statistical analysis of the general characteristics, researcher characteristics, research characteristics and the research trends from total 990 papers, from the first issue to the last issue in 2014, published in the Journal of Korean Ophthalmic Optics Society. Results: Most common number of the authors of the published papers were two or three, respectively 26.8%. Most of the lead authors belong to the schools in Jeolla-do province (31.3%). Most of the educational system of which lead authors belong to is four-year-course system (43.0%). Most common research methods were optometric tests (40.9%). The most common subjects of researches are about the field of optometry (29.8%). The study shows that there were significant differences in the research methods depending on the school systems of the universities to which the lead authors belong (p=0.000). There also were significant differences in the school systems of the universities to which the lead authors belong, and research methods depending on the research subjects (p=0.000). There were meaningful differences according to the period divisions (1996 to 2004 and 2005 to 2014), i.e. the number of authors has been growing, and it is the same case for the number of the authors who belong to four-year-course universities (p=0.000). The number of papers on optometry and contact lenses have increase. The benefits of the research funds have also increased (p<0.005). In addition, the number of the lead authors in the Seoul and Chungcheong province have increased (p=0.000). Conclusions: For the development of the Ophthalmic Optics, it is necessary to broaden the stratum of researchers and deal with various research topics, And joint efforts between eyewear industry and academia and international cooperations are needed.

A Reserch on Rise and Fall of the Sabae Eyewear Industry:

A Reserch on Rise and Fall of the Sabae Eyewear Industry:

Transforming Industrial Districts: Large Firms and Small Business Networks in the Italian Eyewear Industry

This study is an evolutionary comparative analysis of how large, vertically integrated firms and networks of small firms perform, in response to the challenges posed by globalization. It focuses on the Italian eyewear industry which represents an ideal laboratory for studying the establishment and transformation of such diverse production models under ceteris paribus conditions (same industry, same challenges, same product, and same geographical location). Looking at longitudinal statistical data for the Belluno eyewear district and case studies of the four leading companies in the industry, this study demonstrates that, locally embedded networks of small firms no longer represent an organizational structure as robust and stable as in the past. Globalization challenges such networks and demands adjustments that transform the nature of the Belluno eyewear district, away from the traditional stereotype so widespread in the literature, towards a configuration characterized by the presence of leading firms and moderate hierarchy.

Local manufacturing systems and global economy: are they compatible?: The case of the Italian eyewear district

In the era of global economy, are local manufacturing systems still playing a role or are they destined to fade away? No unequivocal answer to this question can be found in the literature. Some think that globalization exposes all the limits of local industrial systems. Others consider the contraposition between global and local to be only apparent. There could be, however, a clear relation between the firm’s competitiveness on the international market and its territorial roots. The present paper focuses on one of the most important local systems in Italy, i.e. the eyewear district. Based on empirical research, the study analyzes the evolution of the eyewear industry, the strategies used by the larger producers to face the current competitive challenges and the consequences of such actions on the local supply system. It is shown that the district has lost most of its traditional features and inter-organizational relations have significantly changed. Opportunities arising from new technologies and global economy seem to favor better equipped, large-sized enterprises rather than small suppliers, or in any case, single units or groups rather than the system. Finally, some suggestions are provided for entrepreneurs or managers operating in industrial districts, concerning vertical integration and sourcing choices (main-contracting firms), and technological and managerial levers that could better qualify the supply offer (sub-contracting firms).