The world’s biggest maker of spectacles wants to be a tech firm

Over the course of six decades Leonardo Del Vecchio, an Italian entrepreneur who died in 2022, built Luxottica into the world’s largest maker of spectacles and sunglasses. In 2018 he merged his firm with Essilor, a French lens manufacturer, to create a Franco-Italian corporate giant that is today worth over $90bn and employs some 200,000 people. The group owns iconic eyewear labels from Ray-Ban to Oliver Peoples, and also produces glasses using the brands of European luxury houses such as Armani and Chanel. On February 14th the company reported that its sales grew by 7% last year, at constant exchange rates, faster than at many other luxury businesses.Now Francesco Milleri, a close confidant of Mr Del Vecchio’s who was appointed chief executive of Luxottica in 2017 and of the combined group in 2020, is looking for the company’s next act. He has two big ideas. First is to become the leader in smart glasses. The ambition is not entirely new: the firm partnered with Google, a tech giant, on its Google Glass—an unambiguous flop thanks in part to its clunky interface and dorky design. The device was discontinued in 2015.