It’s a fine example of how industry and nature can coexist, and to their mutual benefit. The Agordo facility is the heart of the Group, it’s where our living legend started, in 1961. It was not a random choice location: after the ‘50s, as the metal bearing vein in Val Imperina was nearing exhaustion, work in Agordo (originally the mining of pyrite) was drastically cut back and the whole area was faced with emigration.

To deal with rising unemployment and the resulting emigration, Agordo’s town council decided to pay subsidies to anyone setting up an industrial enterprise in the area. Luxottica was one of the companies that used such subsidies.

 

Leonardo Del Vecchio has often said that his biggest piece of luck was being able to invest in the Agordo area and count on local skilled labor.

This valley, whose famously beautiful landscape somehow adds to Luxottica’s uniqueness, has seen the unfolding of an extraordinary story in which a pair of glasses became an icon of “made in Italy” excellence.

 

Luxottica started out making eyewear components under contract and had 14 employees. Everything was done by hand and with meticulous care. There were only a few operatives and production concentrated on small hand-made accessories, acetate frames and semi-finished metal products.

Agordo now has around 3,500 employees and its manufacturing activities integrate the entire process of metal and plastic (injection molded) eyewear production.

 

The recent construction of a two-floor block increased the building’s surface area by some 1,433 square meters to the current total of around 82,000 square meters. This extension rationalized the flow of surface treatment and rhinestone application operations and made room for a new automatic plastic painting plant and a new and luminous canteen (on the second floor of the new block).