The Little-Known Monopoly on Eye Care

Did you know there is one company that owns a bunch of eyewear, eye care, and vision insurance brands? Nearly 70% of the market in the world is owned by the Italian eyewear company, Luxxotica Group S.p.A.

They own:

• Ray-Ban
• Persol
• Oakley

They make frames for:

• Chanel
• Prada
• Giorgio Armani
• Burberry
• Versace
• Dolce and Gabbana
• Miu Miu
• Donna Karan
• Stella McCartney
• Tory Burch

And they own the eyecare brands:

• Lenscrafters
• Sunglass Hut
• Pearle Vision
• Sears Optical
• Target Optical
• Glasses.com

It also owns EyeMed Vision Care which a majority of U.S. companies use to provide vision coverage to their employees. Seems like a bit of a conflict of interest that EyeMed only has mostly Luxxotica-owned eyecare centers as "in network" and then those stores only carry their frames.

Any wonder why eye care costs so much for glass and plastic sticks?