French optical market growth slows to 0.9 percent in 2025
The value of the French optical market rose by just 0.9 percent year on year to approximately €8.3 billion in 2025, according to the latest annual report by DREES, the national research and statistics office for the healthcare sector. This marks a clear slowdown from 2024, when optical spending by ...
Report highlights opportunities for multifocal contact lenses in anti-aging market
A report from CooperVision highlights opportunities for eye care professionals to tap into the growing market for anti-aging products when it comes to the use of multifocal contact lenses (MFCLs).
ZEISS Vision Care appoints new CEO from within
ZEISS Group has appointed Jesper Wiegandt as CEO of ZEISS Vision Care, effective October 1. He succeeds Sven Hermann, who remains CEO of the ZEISS Consumer Markets segment and continues to head its board of management. Wiegandt will also stay on as acting chief commercial officer of ZEISS Vision Care.
Nuance Audio’s challenger hits the US market with HOYA’s PENTAX as lens partner
The competition EssilorLuxottica’s Nuance Audio was set to face, as we reported last month, is now reaching the market. Boston-based startup Legato has made its Legato Frames hearing glasses available for purchase in the US, the first of the new entrants to move.
Laclarée adjusts its plans for commercialization
Over the past two years the French start-up Laclarée has hired a new CEO, Franck Leclere, raised €3.5 million in a seed round, and welcomed a new shareholder, venture fund Rimonci Capital. Plans to commercialize the company’s autofocals have in that time been evolving. The release was originally to occur ...
ZEISS launches new myopia control lens lens built on “dynamic signal” approach
ZEISS Vision Care has introduced ZEISS MyoActive, a myopia management spectacle lens for children, outside China. It is the first lens to apply what the company calls Dynamic Signal Theory. ZEISS announced the lens on October 1 and claims it delivers the highest average efficacy of any myopia control spectacle ...
Armani to begin talks with Essilux, LVMH and L’Oreal on sale of 15% stake
Armani is preparing to begin talks with EssilorLuxottica, L’Oreal and LVMH on the sale of a 15 percent stake, following through on instructions laid out in his will by Giorgio Armani, according to media reports.
Smart glasses and autofocus lenses stand out at SILMO Paris 2026
SILMO Paris organizers have announced that 32,108 eyewear industry professionals visited the 2026 edition of the show, which took place from Sept. 25 to 28 at Paris Nord Villepinte. Slightly more than half (53 percent) came from outside France, from nearly 150 countries, and they met more than 950 exhibitors ...
Italy H1 eyewear exports fall 2.7% as France edges out US as biggest market
The value of Italian eyewear exports fell by 2.7 percent in the first half of 2026 compared to the year earlier to reach €2.705 billion, as France edged out the US as the Italian industry’s largest export market, data from Italian eyewear trade association Anfao showed.
CooperVision opens new global innovation hub, updates on contact lens pipeline
CooperVision officially opened The Vision Centre, its new global innovation hub, in Southampton, England, on Sept. 23, marking the occasion with an update on six major contact lens pipeline advancements it expects to bring to the market in coming years.
Meta and EssilorLuxottica move to occupy every corner of the AI glasses market
Meta Connect 2026 was, by Mark Zuckerberg’s own framing, an event about Muse, the company’s personal AI agent, and the broader reversal it represents: after building glasses on the assumption that the metaverse would arrive first and AI superintelligence later, Meta now puts AI functionality first. For our purposes, though, ...
Topcon leads seed round in Moorfields AI spinout Cascader
Topcon Healthcare has led a seed funding round in Cascader, a London-based start-up applying artificial intelligence (AI) to the detection and management of eye disease. The amount was not disclosed, and no other investors were named.
Essilux upgrades Nuance after a challenging Gen 1 launch, as rivals begin to emerge
EssilorLuxottica has started rolling out Nuance Audio Plus, the next generation of its open-ear hearing glasses for adults with perceived mild to moderate hearing loss, in selected countries, notably France and Spain.
Snap returns to consumers and enters the enterprise market
On Sept. 16 Snap both began selling augmented-reality (AR) glasses to the public for the first time and opened an enterprise sales channel. The consumer glasses, called Specs, cap 11 years of development and five hardware generations, two of them kept off the public market. The move into the enterprise ...
Marcolin-Marchon leadership reshuffle gives VSP Vision’s eyewear business an Italian tilt
Nine months after VSP Vision completed its acquisition of Marcolin, the eyewear group is reshuffling the top management of its combined Marcolin and Marchon operations, the companies announced on September 21. The new structure assigns joint leadership responsibility across both companies’ operations in each key region, which the group said ...