LensOnline has a new, Dutch owner: an investment from Quadrum Capital should enable the Belgian webshop to grow further. The company is looking eagerly at the enormous Italian market.
New ownership
Precise details about the amount involved in the takeover, or about how many shares Quadrum will actually get, are not disclosed. However, Belgian business newspaper De Tijd did find out that Quadrum will become the majority shareholder and that four current shareholders will be bought out.
A focus on the Dutch and Italian markets should make it possible to quadruple turnover by 2029. There are also plans for strong growth in Switzerland, but there is less room for expansion in Belgium: the lens shop already has a 15% market share in its home market. The Italian market, worth half a billion euros annually, is another interesting target – certainly compared to the mere eighty million that the Belgian market represents.
The Antwerp-based retailer sees its omni-channel approach as the basis of its success: “Customers buy their lenses from us online and can then collect them from the optician or have them delivered to their home. We also refer these customers to an optician for an eye examination and thus ensure more traffic”, then-CEO Koen Anné explained in 2017.
