A U.S. Expansion in Sight

New Look Vision Group is shifting its sights south.

With a long and successful history in the Canadian eyecare and eyewear market—with its roots planted when Lunetterie New Look was founded in 1986 by optician Guy Rouleau in Quebec City—the behemoth 400-store optical retailer is now focused on expansion into the U.S. vision care arena.

The first feather in the cap—the acquisition of the luxury-focused, Miami-based, 12-store Edward Beiner optical group in March 2020.

With a renewed outlook—the Group is looking to take its public offering private once again, under a proposed new ownership structure, with a purchase valued at $800 million. “The transaction offers significant and immediate value to our shareholders, while also providing New Look Vision with additional capital to further our expansion and strategic investments in technology,” says Antoine Amiel, president and CEO.

Here, Amiel sits down with EB’s Erinn Morgan to share more.

Please tell us about the history and DNA of New Look Vision Group.

Antoine Amiel: Our DNA is really optometry-centric retail. That comes from our history, a tale of three periods.

First, all business units were founded in the mid- ’80s on the principle that optometrists and opticians should work together. [At that time,] a number of provinces in Canada actually prevented the co-practice.

The second phase is all our retail brands joining together on the premise that we embrace the businesses we acquire—we do not change them, we empower them. Our most important KPI is retention; we have never lost an acquired executive, ever. We start with the principle that they know their business better than we do—we are pretty choosy in who we acquire.

We grew from 70 stores in 2012 to more than 400 stores today, and that gives us size—that opens the third period of our history in the past two years where we’ve been able to add in strategic technology.

The bulk of our tech investment went into Topology, as of a year-and-a-half ago. This is the cradle of our omnichannel growth. It’s about replicating the store experience online—it’s very versatile and all parts can be taken online or in-store except the eye exam, which remains in the clinic.

What are your plans for the successful Edward Beiner stores—and for further expansion in the U.S.?

Amiel: Ed and his group are really the typical New Look Vision acquisition. We don’t acquire businesses where the management team leaves. It’s really been our history—it’s about who we meet—not where we go—and can have a like-minded companion on the journey.

We don’t really unfold the map and put a pin somewhere and say we want to be in L.A. or wherever. We go where we find the right partner. We will continue in the U.S. in the same way.

Like all our business units, Ed is running the business as an independent company. He obviously has expansion potential and the desire to expand—and the capabilities [with us] to expand in that segment across the U.S.

What are the key future initiatives for New Look?

Amiel: We are a great believer in what will be the next stage of Topology, which is bespoke frames. There is fantastic potential to actually make frames locally instead of having stock frames traveling by sea and sitting in a warehouse.

What’s important with Topology is the quest for precision and complete data. That allows us the condition we set to go virtual—we have to be able to deliver the same level of precision and quality [as the in-store experience]. By year-end, it will be in most of our stores.

For us, it’s really transparency—we see very high customer satisfaction and it improves our stores’ productivity. Covid had a slight impact but we were on this path already. One has to be lucky sometimes.

We are great believers in optometry, and we invest [there]. More and more of the rest of the journey is being undertaken online and that trend will continue. I expect in probably three years about half of our delivery will be non-store based.