Fielmann - History

History

In 1972 Günther Fielmann established an optometry shop in Cuxhaven. He recognised a gap in the market for eyewear for consumers using mandatory health insurance as payment, as these customers often faced a disappointing lack of covered choices in frames. At the time, there were only six plastic models of eyeglass frames for adults and two for children.

In 1981 Fielmann signed a special contract with the AOK insurance at Esens and designed 90 frame models of plastic and metal in 640 variants. This was the end of an era with unitary health insurance glasses in Germany. In 1984 Fielmann started an advertising campaign with the slogan "Mein Papi hat keinen Pfennig dazu bezahlt! (My daddy didn't have to pay a cent himself!)" From 1987 to 1990 Fielmann expanded his share in the quantity market from 11% to 16% and at the time held 3% of all eyewear stores in Germany.

Fielmann is listed at the stock index since 1994. In the same year the company with 294 subsidiaries and 4,986 employees made a turnover of DM 868 million and a pre-tax profit of DM 80.5 million. In 1995 Fielmann took over Pro-Optik AG of Basel, Switzerland, with its 6 Swiss branches. The Fielmann shop in Zurich's Bahnhofstrasse gained an annual turnover of € 16 million. With 4% of all German eyewear stores, Fielmann increased its market share from 32% to 38% from 1995 to 1998. 1999 brought about the market entry to Austria and 24 branches were opened there until 2007.

In 2001 the non-profit Fielmann-Akademie was established, which bought Plön Castle from the government of Schleswig-Holstein in 2002 and opened a training centre for optometrists there. Since 2005/2006 Bachelor and Master degrees in optometry are being offered in cooperation with the University of Applied Sciences Lübeck. After several years of refurbishments the castle was re-opened for visitors in 2006.

In 2002 a large production and logistics centre was opened in Rathenow, Brandenburg, where 5 million spectacle frames are being shipped per year.

After the cancellation of eyewear products from the catalogue of Germany's mandatory health insurances, Fielmann together with HanseMerkur insurance created an initial tariff insurance.

In June 2007 Fielmann opened two subsidiaries in Luxembourg and is now present in six European countries.

On 6 January 2009 Fielmann's stock indexing advanced from SDAX to MDAX.

In 2012 the revenue increased at 4.8% to € 1.29 billion. Pre-tax profit increased at 4.1% to € 180.6 million, income increased at 3.4% to € 129.7 million.

As of 31 December 2012 Fielmann operated 671 subsidiaries, employed 15,494 people, 2,779 of whom were in training. With a share of 5% of all German optometric stores, Fielmann trains 37% of all optometrist apprentices in Germany.