Pearle Vision is an American chain of

eye care Optometry is the healthcare practice concerned with examining the eyes for visual defects, prescribing corrective lenses, and detecting eye abnormalities. In the United States and Canada, optometrists are those that hold a post-baccalaureate f ...

stores. It is one of the largest franchised optical retailers in North America. The company was acquired by

Luxottica Luxottica Group S.p.A. is an Italian glasses, eyewear multinational corporation headquartered in Milan. As a vertically integrated company, Luxottica designs, manufactures, distributes, and retails its eyewear brands through its own subsidiaries ...

(which has since merged with

Essilor Essilor International is a French multinational corporation specialized in the design, manufacture and sale of ophthalmic lenses, optical equipment and instruments. It is the world's largest manufacturer of ophthalmic lenses. Founded in 197 ...

to form

EssilorLuxottica EssilorLuxottica SA is a Franco-Italian Vertical integration, vertically integrated multinational corporation, multinational holding company registered in Charenton-Le-Pont and headquartered in nearby Paris. It designs, produces and markets opht ...

), an Italian eyewear company, in 2004. As of December 31, 2018, Pearle Vision operated 110 corporate stores and had 419 franchises throughout North America.

History

It was founded in 1961 by Stanley Pearle, an optometrist in

Savannah, Georgia Savannah ( ) is the oldest city in the U.S. state of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia and the county seat of Chatham County, Georgia, Chatham County. Established in 1733 on the Savannah River, the city of Savannah became the Kingdom of Great Brita ...

, United States. In 1971, Pearle purchased a 17-store optical chain owned by Robert Hillman and Larry Kohan; together, Hillman and Kohan stayed on and helped to expand Pearle Vision nationwide. By the 1970s the chain was owned by G. D. Searle Pharmaceutical, with founder Stanley Pearle serving as a board member. Stanley Pearle sold his stores to British conglomerate

Grand Metropolitan Grand Metropolitan plc was a leisure, manufacturing and property conglomerate headquartered in England. The company was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index until it merged with Guinness plc to form ...

in 1985. Grand Met expanded Pearle Vision to more than 1,000 locations worldwide by 1990, but profits became elusive. In 1996, Grand Met sold the Pearle stores in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico to Cole National Corporation, which operated optical departments inside such retail stores as

Sears Sears, Roebuck and Co., commonly known as Sears ( ), is an American chain of department stores and online retailer founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosen ...

BJ's Wholesale Club BJ's Wholesale Club Holdings, Inc., commonly referred as BJ's, is an American regional membership-only warehouse club chain based in Marlborough, Massachusetts, operating in the eastern United States in addition to Ohio, Michigan, Louisville, Ke ...

and

Target Target may refer to: Warfare and shooting * Shooting target, used in marksmanship training and various shooting sports ** Bullseye (target), the goal one for which one aims in many of these sports ** Aiming point, in field artille ...

. In 1997 Cole National bought the 150-store NuVision chain in

Michigan Michigan ( ) is a peninsular U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, Upper Midwestern United States. It shares water and land boundaries with Minnesota to the northwest, Wisconsin to the west, ...

and converted them to the Pearle Vision name. The Belgian stores were sold to GIB in Belgium and the Dutch stores to HAL Investments in the Netherlands. HAL Investments bought the Belgian stores 1 year later from GIB and merged both chains into Pearle Benelux. Pearle Boxmeer

, owner of LensCrafters, purchased Cole National in 2004, a deal that brought together the two largest eyewear retailers in the United States. The Pearle chain of opticians in Europe is now part of Grandvision and has more than 1000 branches in 43 countries including the

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

(pearle.nl), Belgium, Germany ( Apollo-Optik), Austria (pearle.at),

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic, is a country on the Iberian Peninsula in Southwestern Europe. Featuring Cabo da Roca, the westernmost point in continental Europe, Portugal borders Spain to its north and east, with which it share ...

, Italy,

Finland Finland, officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It borders Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bothnia to the west and the Gulf of Finland to the south, ...

and

Estonia Estonia, officially the Republic of Estonia, is a country in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, and to the east by Ru ...

. For more than 40 years the company has been selling branded products and products under its own brand name. The first Pearle Optical store in the

Middle East The Middle East (term originally coined in English language) is a geopolitical region encompassing the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq. The term came into widespread usage by the United Kingdom and western Eur ...

opened in Marina Mall,

Kuwait Kuwait, officially the State of Kuwait, is a country in West Asia and the geopolitical region known as the Middle East. It is situated in the northern edge of the Arabian Peninsula at the head of the Persian Gulf, bordering Iraq to Iraq–Kuwait ...

, on January 15, 2003, and currently operates 18 stores in the Middle East: 4 in

, 10 in KSA, 3 in

UAE The United Arab Emirates (UAE), or simply the Emirates, is a country in West Asia, in the Middle East, at the eastern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is a federal elective monarchy made up of seven emirates, with Abu Dhabi serving as i ...

, 5 in

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

and 1 in

Qatar Qatar, officially the State of Qatar, is a country in West Asia. It occupies the Geography of Qatar, Qatar Peninsula on the northeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula in the Middle East; it shares Qatar–Saudi Arabia border, its sole land b ...

The company's operations in California are affected by

consumer protection Consumer protection is the practice of safeguarding buyers of goods and services, and the public, against unfair practices in the marketplace. Consumer protection measures are often established by law. Such laws are intended to prevent business ...

statutes designed to protect consumers from Pearle's operations with optometrists and opticians in the same store, which presents a

conflict of interest A conflict of interest (COI) is a situation in which a person or organization is involved in multiple wikt:interest#Noun, interests, financial or otherwise, and serving one interest could involve working against another. Typically, this relates t ...

under California consumer law. On June 12, 2006, the

Supreme Court of California The Supreme Court of California is the Supreme court, highest and final court of appeals in the judiciary of California, courts of the U.S. state of California. It is headquartered in San Francisco at the Earl Warren Building, but it regularly ...

ruled that Pearle Vision could not escape the reach of those statutes, and Pearle Vision's attempts to find a loophole through the Knox-Keene Health Care Service Plan Act of 1975 were unavailing.v. Cole''
38 Cal. 4th 964, 44 Cal. Rptr. 3d 261, 135 P.3d 669 (2006).

References

External links

* Luxottica Eyewear retailers of the United States American companies established in 1961 Retail companies established in 1961 Franchises Eyewear retailers of Canada Eyewear companies of the United States 2004 mergers and acquisitions {{US-company-stub