Oakley Builds Irish Plant to Keep Close Eye on Prescription Unit
By JENNIFER BELLANTONIO
Foothill Ranch-based Oakley Inc. is looking to grow its two-year-old prescription eyeglasses business.
Known primarily for sunglasses, Oakley has built a 10,000-square-foot prescription lens finishing plant in Mullinger, Ireland, and hired 25 workers. The facility opened last year.
The move allows Oakley to take over the prescription lenses making for its European markets. Two years ago, the company started a similar operation at its Orange County headquarters to support the North American market.
Oakley had been outsourcing the work to specialty lens makers in the U.S. and Europe.
“The technological complexity of Oakley lenses and frames requires intense attention to detail and quality,” said Becky Wilkinson, program manager of Oakley’s prescription eyewear unit in a company newsletter. “Establishing capabilities in-house allows us to better control the complex manufacturing processes and helps improve the operating margins of our prescription business.”
Wilkinson said the company chose Ireland based on the country’s “skilled workforce and the favorable business climate.”
The move also allows Oakley to be closer to its (European) dealers and have shorter lead times to fill orders, said the company’s chief operating officer, Link Newcomb, at a recent annual shareholder meeting.
Oakley is seeing strong demand for its prescription glasses in Europe, which it describes as its largest market for the eyewear.
Last year, 71% of Oakley’s international prescription eyewear sales were generated through offices in Paris, Germany and England, said Gar Jackson, the company’s manager of corporate communications.
Prescription eyewear is gaining momentum, though it still comprises a small chunk of the company’s sales of $489.6 million last year. Prescription revenue was $34.4 million, a 39% increase versus a year earlier.
In 2000, the unit’s first year of operation, sales were $11.6 million.
But prescription eyewear is the second-biggest piece of its “new product categories,” which also include apparel, watches and footwear. Together, Oakley’s new product categories were about 25%, or $133.7 million, of the company’s total sales.
Apparel is the biggest slice of these categories at $56.6 million, a 49% jump from last year.
Footwear posted a 4% gain to $31.2 million, with watches the smallest at $11.6 million, a 42% increase from 2001.
Oakley’s bread and butter still is sunglasses, which make up about 62%, or $330.2 million, of the company’s sales.
Oakley is trying to diversify its prescription glasses and lenses.
The company offers a prescription lens in single vision and progressive (only in the U.S.). It also has 17 different lens colors, including polarized.
Frames are available in several materials, shapes and sizes for men and women.
