Leonardo Del Vecchio dies, the man who put glasses on the world

There is an obituary model for great entrepreneurs that fits so many times in the story of the self-made man, in the fortune built from scratch.

This American myth of the businessman, however, resists the rigorous analysis of few biographies.

Leonardo Del Vecchio (Milan, 1935-Milan, 2022), the second richest person in Italy -behind Giovanni Ferrero-, owner of the largest optical industry empire in the world, responds without exaggeration to that profile.

On Monday he died in Milan at the age of 87 from pneumonia, leaving behind a huge conglomerate of companies he began building six decades ago from a saddle factory in Belluno, northern Italy.

Leonardo del Vecchio, founder of Luxottica and executive president of EssilorLuxottica, the largest production and distribution company in the world of optics, grew up in the Martinitt orphanage, where at the age of seven his parents, emigrants from southern Italy (Apulia) left him. ), to be able to work and support an extremely humble family.

In a country where family capitalism is deeply rooted, his story, away from nepotism or blood ties in business, takes on even more value.

At age 14 he found work as a waiter at Johnson, a trophy factory.

And in the afternoon, he was studying design in Brera (Milan).

“Growing up without a family is something that cannot be explained if you have not lived it.

It marks you,” he explained in his recently authorized memoir.

The origin of Luxottica, whose last bet was that of smart glasses with virtual applications, was practically accidental.

At the age of 26, he moved to Agordo, in the province of Belluno, where the mountain community had offered land to those who decided to found a company in the area.

There he developed the first factory for eyeglass frames.

From 1969 he became the sole owner of the company, since then the company has continued to grow internationally through various acquisitions.

In 1981 he made his first international leap by buying the American brand Avantgarde.

But it was only the beginning of a great expansion.

Del Vecchio, also a majority shareholder of Mediobanca and Generali, promoted the company in 1990 by taking it to the New York stock exchanges first and, ten years later, to the Milan stock exchange.

Luxotica continued its expansion by acquiring another optical giant, Oakley, based in California and specializing in the production of

sports glasses.

On October 1, 2018, Luxottica merged with the French company Essilor, giving life to the new colossus, EssilorLuxottica, in an operation worth 50,000 million and that has about 80,000 employees and more than 9,000 stores.

The giant today also includes brands such as Ray-Ban.

The personal way of carrying out the company, even if it had become a giant, prevented him from completely detaching himself from his government.

On July 27, 2004, Del Vecchio had decided to leave his position as CEO to Andrea Guerra, but they say that during a meeting in 2014, Del Vecchio handed him a piece of paper in which he told him that the company belonged to "the Del family". Vechio”.

A warning that he was going to retake power.

“It was Del Vecchio who had the last word in all the decisions of the company, not only in the strategic ones.

After all, he had always been like that, after all that was the secret of his success”, he wrote in the biography of him by Tommaso Ebhardt.

Prime Minister Mario Draghi also lamented his death in a note released by Palacio Chigi.

“For more than sixty years he has been a protagonist of the Italian business world, creating one of the largest companies in the country and starting from very humble origins.

Knight of work since 1986, he has always combined international openness with attention to social aspects and to the territory”.

His six children, heirs to his business and patrimonial legacy, must now continue that line.