From an orphanage to the empire behind Ray-Ban

Transcript

His mother gave him to an orphanage at 7. 50 years later, he was running the $25 billion empire behind Ray Bann, Oakley, and Chanel. Meet Leonardo Delvecchio, born in Milan in 1935. Father died selling vegetables before he was born. Mother had five kids and a factory job, so she placed him in an orphanage seven years inside. At 14, he apprenticed in a metal factory and lost part of a finger. The owners pushed him into night classes. At 23, he opened his own workshop. Three years later, he loaded his machines onto a van and drove into the Dolomites. In 1961, in a village called Agordo, he founded Laxodica with 14 employees. Then he saw what everyone had missed. Glasses weren't a medical device. They were the one thing people wore on their face every day. That made them fashion. So he stopped making parts and made his own frames, then bought the distributors, then the shops. In 1995, he took over lens crafters, a company five times his size. In 1999, he bought Ray Bann for $640 million. The brand was dying in gas stations for $19. He pulled it from 13,000 outlets. We built a wayfarer, moved it into Nieman, Marcus, raised the price. Sales went from $252 million to over $2 billion, then Oakley, then Chanel. At 87, he was still checking store sales on his iPhone. His company now makes a quarter of the glasses on Earth, not bad for a boy his mother gave away.

Transcribed automatically from the video, so small errors are possible.