The Orphan Billionaire: The Story of Luxottica Founder Leonardo Del Vecchio

Jason Allan Scott (0:07)

Hi, I'm Jason Allan Scott. I've been in business 35 years, and I've sold or been involved in nine exits. I've started 11 companies and one fiasco company. I've run seven-figure solo business with no staff for the last six years, and I've distilled everything I've learned, plus decades of studying world-changing founders into the lessons that actually matter for building a new life. But I believe it all starts with here. Philosophy, mindset, I'm sure you've heard this from every single person who ever speaks about business. However, and I'm gonna talk about someone who is incredible in today's episode. But before we get into that, I want to before we get into the full of today's philosophy, The Orphan Billionaire, I want to tell you about Pitch Capital, our headline sponsor. Honestly, something you've heard me say on many episodes before. I wish it existed 20 years ago. Fundraising is brutal. Starting a company and raising money is brutal. It can take six to 12 months of your life. It's decks, intros, follow ups, rejections, meetings that go nowhere. Money that's promised but not delivered. Well, that's where www.pitchcapital comes in. Pitch Capital is an AI fundraising platform designed to automate the heavy lifting. You upload your business details and within 90 seconds, you've got an investor-ready pitch deck with financial models. It is incredible. And then the AI matches you with investors from pre-seed to series C plus. They help handle outreach and even support you through a secure escrow workflow. If you're raising capital, go to www.pitchcapital.com and save yourselves months of nightmare. All right, let's talk about what's been on my mind. Spec savers. If you're British, you know what spec savers is. If you're not, and you're from somewhere else, I want you to imagine these. And I've definitely got one in your town. And it's this. These optical shops that have these signs that say, come in and get your eye tested, get glasses, deals on right now, get the best frames, designer frames, all this kind of thing. So I realized I needed glasses. And if you've watched more than a couple of episodes, and if you definitely stay watching these episodes, you're not just listening to them to hear my incredible dulcet tones. Jokes aside. Then you'll notice I have three pairs, because apparently I have three different pairs needed. I have a very focal, I have reading glasses, I have long-distance glasses, short-distance glasses, and one that you can see all the in-between. But I went in because it had a sign outside, and I thought, you know what, it's like half price and you get a free eye test, and I'm just gonna go in and get it done. But at the same time, I was reading this book about the orphan billionaire that changed spectacles forever, which is the book we're gonna get into today, with the founder we're gonna get into today. So I go in and they're like, it's 50 bucks. It's 50 bucks and we'll get you an eye test for free. And so I'm like, great, I'll get that done. They're like, oh, by the way, it's another 50 bucks. And we'll do a 3D eye scan to really get into that. And you can see your eye from all different points of view. It's just really important for you to have. And I'm like, you know what? I'm a sucker. Like every salesperson, it's easy to sell to me. So I'm like, sure, let's drop that in there. So they put that in and they're like, great, we're gonna come back to you. It won't take long, five, 10 minutes. By the way, every one of these is owned by an optometrist, so we're not salespeople. I was like, great. So they come out and they're like, you know, so you're already $100 down, 100 bucks down, 100 quid for those people, for like $123 in the US currency conversion, and which is like 10,000 rand in South Africa or 15,000 baht. Anyway, point is, I need to stop doing that. It's my autism taking me on long journeys, which are not necessary given our time constraints of a podcast. Anyway, point is, she sits down and she says, which would you like to choose a pair of frames? We've got Gucci, Hugo, Tom Ford, Prada, all these different things, which is funny, because the whole reason I'm wearing this is to remind myself of these particular labels, because I don't forget. So anyways, I'm like, sure, why not? Let's do, I said, oh no, you know what? I've got some from when I was in New York. I've got these mascots, so I can just put them in that. And they're like, well, it is extra for those. I'm like, extra? Why would it be extra? I'm saving you giving me a pair of frames. And they're like, no, but we've got to put it in. We've got to put it in. Great, not a bucks. It's 50 bucks. Sign that off. Oh, by the way, you've got to sign this waiver that says if we break your glasses or break your frames while doing it, it's not our fault. That seems a bit crazy, but sure, sign that off. By the way, would you like it to be tinted, you know, so that it protects you from Blu-ray while looking at your screen all day? And I'm like, you know what? Yeah, sure. 50 bucks. Would you like it to be scratch resistant? What? Scratch resistant, you know, in case you dropping it, picking it up, putting it down? Sure. What's that? 50 bucks. Would you like it to have a special coating on it that makes it kind of dust resistant? Let me guess. 50 bucks? Yes. No. No. This is where I turn the tables. No, because I know how much these things cost. I've read the book. I know where this industry started. I know who the guy that started it. I know the entire story. And this is a money making machine. Now, take a listen, make yourself comfortable, because you're going to hear the story. You're never going to look at an optometrist the same way. Today's book. The book is The Spectacle of Big Lens, How One Giant Company Will Dominate How the World Sees, by author Sam Knight. Leonardo Del Vecchio, The Orphan's Advantage, A Spectacle, Act One, Introduction. Your dad dies before you're born. Your mom can't afford to take care of you. You grow up without a family in an institution. You learn a trade and start working full time at the age of 14 You work all day and go to school at night. You're precise, meticulous, restless, and work circles around everyone. You're promoted to run the factory at 18, but the thought of working for anyone else terrifies you. For your entire life, you'll be obsessed with one word, control. You'll do whatever it takes to escape the harshness of poverty and the pangs of hunger. You organize your life around a simple principle, I want to be the best at everything I do. You start your own workshop, you create the best product, and your biggest customer wants to become your partner. They underestimate you and they abuse you. And you destroy all of them. You take all of their customers and you're not satisfied with ever being a subcontractor. You want everything. You make your own glasses, you buy your own distributor, you list your own company on the New York Stock Exchange, and you complete a hostile takeover of much larger companies. In fact, you buy the entire retail chains and control everything about your product, from the raw materials, the relationships with the customers. Your competitors call you the hawk because you circle, wait and strike. You work 20 hours a day and fuse yourself with the factory. You get married four times to three different women and have six beautiful children. You don't look back, you don't rest on your laurels, and you don't go to sleep on your winds. You make something great, and then you do it again and again. And your biggest deal comes at 60 years old, sorry, 60 years into your career. Nothing will stop you but death. This is the story of Leonardo Del Vecchio. Del Vecchio, just double checking my mic. The Global Eyewear Empire. Leonardo Del Vecchio is the patron, the legend, the haunting spirit of the global eyewear business. He is the citizen Kane, but also it's Captain Ahab. His father dies before he's born. His mother was poor and he was raised in an orphanage. He went to work at a metal engraver at the young old age of 14 At 25, Del Vecchio opened a workshop in a tiny village in the Dolomite Mountains that was giving away free land to companies that were willing to move there. Del Vecchio builds a factory to make parts for eyeglasses. He has a young family. He builds a house next door to the factory so he can start his day at 3am. Over the next half century, Del Vecchio will grow his company. His company name? Luxottica. He will grow this company into the world's greatest maker of glasses in an industry that was traditionally fragmented and small scale. The totality of Del Vecchio's ambition takes his rivals by surprise. And this will remind you of another great European founder, Bernard Ornott. And there's a lot of things that Del Vecchio is going to do throughout his career that are very Ornott like. And we will do an episode in this season, Season One, about Ornott, who I think last year, 2025, was the richest man in the world. And you'll find out why in that episode. So make sure to subscribe, set the notifications so you don't miss a single episode and just falls into your phone. Or if you're on YouTube, make sure it, I don't know, you know what to do. I've watched YouTube before. Anyway, Del Vecchio, he seeks control over every element of the business, from the metal alloys of the hinges to the stores where eyewear is sold. In a series of audacious takeovers, Del Vecchio acquires brands such as Ray Band and Oakley and Purcell, and signs contracts with fashion houses such as Armani, Ralph Lauren and Chanel. Now I want you to think about that. Next time you're in a store, right, a sun hut at an airport or an optometrist in LA, and they're trying to sell you on, would you like Ray Band? Would you like Oakley? Would you like Tom Ford? Would you like Purcell? Would you like whatever? Chanel, Armani, et cetera, et cetera. It's one guy. It's one company. It's one factory. They're just changing the name on the side. It shouldn't charge you more based on a name. That's like, I don't know what that's like, but that's ridiculous. And remember that next time you're buying glasses, it's all from the same thing. Del Vecchio builds factories in China, acquires vision insurers in the US and retail chains on four continents. Del Vecchio is Italy's highest individual taxpayer and the country's second richest man. A few years ago, people thought his career had run its course, but at the ripe old age of 81, Del Vecchio announced the greatest deal of his life, in which he also secured the final missing part of everything. His frames, the lenses. Everything is now sorted when Luxottica agrees to merge with ESCELLO, E-S-S-I-L-R. Del Vecchio is referred to as simply El Presidente. In the optical world, conversations turn from the personal charisma to the menace that is Del Vecchio. He is the godfather, said Dean Butler, who founded Lenscrafters, that's like Specsavers, but in the US, in 1983 Del Vecchio bought Lenscrafters in 1995 The godfather is the guy, he runs it, he runs this industry, is the quote I highlighted. There's two foundational ideas I want you to think about. Del Vecchio builds the empire of Luxottica on two ideas. The first was to do everything itself. After the company's initial progression from parts to complete frames in the early 1970s, he sets out to control everything, step by step by step by step. It's this incredible diligence of not only wanting to know every single part, which you'll find out later he does, but to own every single part. He needs to own every single part because it comes back to the power of control. As we said, Del Vecchio wants to be referred to as al Presidente, but he also wants to be al Presidente. He wants to be the godfather. He wants to own everything, every single thing, every small individual domino that could potentially knock over his pile of dominoes. So he has these two ideas. The first is to do everything itself, from parts to complete frames, which he does in the 1970s, to set out a step by step plan to control the entire process of making and selling glasses, from acquiring the raw materials to selling its own products in its own stores. No one at this point had ever done what Del Vecchio did. Now interestingly, when we do an episode on Steve Jobs, and I'm reading Steve Jobs' one of his biographies at the moment, I'm going to try and read two or three before his episode, he does the exact same thing. And my belief is he learned this from Del Vecchio, because he was a student, just like you are now, of biographies, of great people, of creatives, of founders, of genius.