The youngest of four brothers, and fatherless, Leonardo Del Vecchio spent his childhood in a Milanese orphanage. His mother had to work and she had no one to leave him with. Despite being born with nothing, Del Vecchio died this Monday at the age of 87 as the second richest man in Italy, only behind Giovanni Ferrero, the king of Nutella. He was the executive president of EssilorLuxottica, owner of the iconic Ray-Ban and Oakley glasses, and leaves an estate valued at 27,000 million euros, according to Forbes magazine.
Del Vecchio's story is worthy of a Hollywood script. Born in Milan in 1935, the seven years he spent at the Martinitt orphanage served to form a "character of steel," Tommaso Ebhardt writes in an authorized biography. At the age of 14 he began to work and study at the same time, and at 26 he moved to Agordo, in the mountains of Belluno, which would end up being the world capital of glasses. There he founded Luxottica in 1961, which began as a small frame factory, on land offered by the community to those who wanted to bring employment to the area.
By the end of the 1960s, Luxottica had already started producing its own designs. In the seventies, it was launched into distribution and retail. In the eighties, Del Vecchio was already buying companies in the United States. In the 1990s, it was listed on the New York Stock Exchange. His first international jump was in 1981, when he bought the French Avantgarde. He later reached agreements with luxury brands such as Armani, Chanel, Bulgari, Prada or Valentino. “Leonardo, so many discussions, so many conversations, so much honesty to make our dreams come true”, recalled Giorgio Armani, referring to the moment when they understood that glasses could be essential fashion accessories and not just functional. It was in 1999 that he bought Ray-Ban for $640 million. He then acquired another giant, the Californian Oakley.
The rest is already known. At the time of his death he still chaired EssilorLuxottica, a colossus born in 2018 from the merger of his company with the French Essilor, which is the largest production and distribution company in the world of optics, has 180,000 workers and more than 7,000 points for sale in the world. He always kept an eye on his company, which, as he confessed, saw more than his family in the beginning. He had six children by three different women, who will now inherit his great fortune. He was also a 6.84% shareholder in Mediobanca and a 4.87% shareholder in the insurance company Generali.
Like many other Italian entrepreneurs, Del Vecchio had a hard time breaking away from his creation. He never managed to designate an heir and, although in 2004 he gave control of the management to the executive director Andrea Guerra, in 2014 he wanted to return to power after a series of disagreements. The company belonged to the family, he explained to her. But, unlike others like Silvio Berlusconi or Gianni Agnelli, the emperor of the glasses always wanted to keep a much more discreet profile, hardly giving interviews. For his 80th birthday he gave away 140,000 shares of Luxottica to his Italian employees for being the "true craftsmen" of his success.
