Friday 17th December 2021
Crisis management at Fielmann
“That was a test”
Almost every German knows the brand, every second pair of glasses in Germany is from the optician: Fielmann. Marc Fielmann has been at the helm for two years, at just 32 years old. He is driving international expansion and digitization – will we soon be able to order glasses completely online?
Order glasses online? Why not – nowadays you can order almost anything online, from t-shirts to dinner. However, the matter is more complicated, “because there are certain measurements, the eye test, the fitting, the familiarization of the glasses, which you just can’t do online,” said Marc Fielmann in the podcast “Die Null”.
At least not in terms of quality. The son of the company’s founder, Günther Fielmann, has been at the helm of the family company for two years, at just 32 years old. Since then he has been expanding abroad, driving digitization forward – and had to steer Fielmann through the corona pandemic, where the optician, according to the boss, got away with “a black eye”.
This year the company is growing strongly, according to the latest forecasts, sales should increase from 1.4 to 1.7 billion euros. For Marc Fielmann, the pandemic was also a form of maturity test, he sees the crisis as a “test”. He has received a lot of praise and recognition from long-term employees for crisis management. The optician can feel the fourth wave. “The frequencies are falling,” said Fielmann. But it is not acute or “dramatic”. For some years now, Fielmann has been increasingly relying on online, which means much more than e-commerce. The optician has invested 15 million euros in measurement technology alone and has registered 25 patents.
“The long-term goal is that we can map the entire online glasses purchase in quality,” said the CEO. That still requires research and development. An online eye test, for example, is already possible, but modern smartphones are required and the process is only possible up to a certain visual acuity. Another topic that is currently being researched a lot: smart glasses. According to Fielmann’s assessment, they have the potential to “change the market considerably”. Startups from all over the world are currently investing millions in the segment.
Listen in the new episode of “The Zero Hour”:
How Marc Fielmann describes his relationship with his father
How it came about that he broke glasses himself in front of a customer
Why Fielmann cooperates with the IT company Teamviewer
You can find all episodes directly at Audio Now, Audio Now or Audio Now or via Google.