It was somewhere down a cobblestoned street in Le Bouscat, Bordeaux, that French optician Alain Afflelou identified the spot that would house the first of his optical stores. The entrepreneur recognised the stigma surrounding eyeglasses at the time and thought that maybe he could help to flip it around and create frames and lenses that were fun, fashionable and affordable.
Through clever advertising campaigns (including ‘Half Your Frame for Free’ in 1978 and a drive to sell frames at cost price in the early-80s), his business started to gain traction in the marketplace. By the late-70s, he had signed on his first 3 franchisees – all trained opticians – and that’s when the rapid expansion began.
Global expansion
By 1985, there were 100 stores in operation, a number that continued to swell. Today, the brand – named AFFLELOU PARIS Group after its founder – is present in 33 countries (through its wholesale strategy and shops ALAIN AFFLELOU). While it’s a global leader in the franchise space, the majority of its turnover – some 65% – is still generated in France. Frédéric Poux, the President and CEO, wants that to change.
The opportunity for me was to transform and move to a globalisation of the Group.
He has a strategy in place to help the company expand into new regions, while remaining true to its original French roots. “The opportunity for me [when I became CEO] was to transform and move to a globalisation of the Group,” he says. “That was my goal and we are succeeding. We now open one new site in a new country every month. That’s pretty impressive.”
Good management & strong partnerships
Frédéric has been in the top spot for 5 years, but his history with the business goes back much further than that; he initially joined as a trainee in 1993. AFFLELOU was a national company in those days, and Frédéric is proud to have played a role in changing that.
“My overarching goal is to balance our turnover figure. Ideally, we want 50% of our turnover to come from abroad and 50% from France. We’re well into this process now. It’s not easy to become international.
Without a good team and the right measures in place, you can’t succeed. So my most important thing is to move the company forward by reinforcing our core personnel and improving the digitisation of our operations. We are well on track with that,” he says.
AFFLELOU Group’s most recent openings abroad have been in Asia, as well as parts of South America. Frédéric says he believes the business model has been able to work so well overseas because ALAIN AFFLELOU and AFFLELOU PARIS (Asia) stores are uniquely owned and run by opticians.
In fact, they are run by “the best opticians in the area”, he states. “We partner with them and we work as a team. When you partner with a good optician, they stay with you because you are efficient for them, and we stay with them because of their talent. If that’s not the case, we move on.”
“Innovation is in our DNA”
Constantly coming up with fresh ideas also plays a huge role in what makes AFFLELOU stand out from its competitors. “We innovate a lot – whether it’s with our house brand AFFLELOU PARIS, our spokesmodel Sharon Stone, or promotions in our shops. It’s our DNA. Everyone in the team is motivated by that idea.
We invented a lot of things that are around today in the optical sector. We started the ‘Second pair for €1’ campaign in 1999; we invented the unbreakable lenses with blue light filters; we recently launched our SMART TONIC magnetic frames. We do crazy things! It could be product, it could be offers; innovation is in our DNA.
“The real difference between AFFLELOU and our competitors is that, if I’m honest, they typically duplicate and replicate our innovations. Basically, they copy us. But we prefer to be copied; it’s evidence that we’re good and we’re innovative. If we’re not copied, then perhaps the concept wasn’t really that good in the first place.”
Frédéric adds that in addition to being innovative, he wants AFFLELOU’s eyewear to be affordable. “It’s not always fun to wear spectacles, you know? Sometimes it’s just for fashion. But if you must wear glasses, it’s not always fun. We’re totally aware of that and we try to solve that problem by being innovative but also affordable. That’s my overall goal.”