Products & ideas for the laboratory professional.
Issue link: https://opticallabproducts.epubxp.com/i/442985
OPINIONS ONE-TO-ONE 6 january 2015 opticallabproducts.com Carol Gilhawley, Editor-in-Chief, OLP, interviews Douglas C. Hepper, executive chairman, Vision-Ease Lens Worldwide. CAROL: WHY DID YOU MOVE INTO EQUIPMENT? DOUG: MyCoat ™ is an exciting piece of anti-refective coating equipment. It is a small-capacity machine—six lenses per run—with a rapid cycle time of 15 minutes or less. It can produce standard AR coatings as well as mirrors and specialty AR. It is priced attrac- tively and enables retailers or laboratories to offer a wider range of mirror and AR products. We have had great success with the Q. What challenges has Vision-Ease experienced in the last 13 years? (see Lab News p19). We were given the opportunity to invest back into the company alongside Wind Point as co-investors and I believe almost everybody who was given that opportunity did so. CAROL: HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE VISION-EASE? DOUG: We are a global manufac- turer of lenses. We are not a labora- tory company. Our customers are either integrated laboratories or wholesale laboratories, but many of them are retailers with integrated laboratories. We do have a small laboratory business that we call Venue, and we use Venue not to compete with our customers, but to manufacture products for them that they can't manufacture for them- selves. For instance, for a direct surface progressive that we have, and we've got a couple of very nice designs, we have customers that don't have the equipment or don't sell enough yet. So, rather than buying it from somebody else, they buy it from us. We take our product, surface it, take the prescription, and we sell it back to them, so it's a win-win. When they grow big enough to put in their own equipment, they do. So it's just a way of supporting our customers to introduce new products. A. I was recruited from PPG Industries, Inc. to become CEO of BMC Industries in 2002. BMC had two major divi- sions. One was Vision-Ease and the other made pieces for cathode ray television tubes which don't exist anymore. We knew that business didn't have a long life. We were trying to turn the company around and save it but the TV component business died more quickly than we could substitute it with new sales. Unfortunately, when that went down, it took the whole corporation into bankruptcy in 2003, and then in 2004 the only piece that really had value was Vision-Ease. We came out of bankruptcy with ownership by a company called Insight Equity. Insight bought us in 2004, owned us for 10 years; it was a good partnership. We saved the Vision-Ease business which was very solid and we've been able to grow it ever since. CAROL: LAST SEPTEMBER, VISION-EASE WAS BOUGHT AGAIN. DOUG: Yes, Insight sold its shares to a private equity company out of Chicago called Wind Point Partners which has been around since 1984 and has about $2.8 billion invested. DOUG HEPPER'S 29-year stint at PPG Industries, Inc. included working in Pittsburgh, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Houston, Detroit, and Cleveland. At PPG he handled a wide range of coatings—automotive paint, automotive aftermarket paint, and some plastics. In 2002, he was recruited to become CEO of BMC Industries of which Vision-Ease Lens was a division. He worked in that capacity until November of last year when he became executive chairman. It tends to buy platform companies with sales in the range of $100- $500 million and grows them. It looks for solid companies with solid management teams and good growth potential; it looked at our industry and said, okay, well, Vision-Ease fts all of that. CAROL: WAS VISION-EASE FOR SALE? DOUG: Being owned by private equity, there was no sales process. They approached our owners and said, hey, we're interested in the company. I knew the Wind Point managers from past experience. They knew me. They followed the company. They talked to Insight and came to a deal that I think is an excellent one for both sides and will basically bring fresh capital, fresh energy, and fresh ideas to a management team in a company that's very solid. CAROL: HAS WIND POINT IM- PLEMENTED ANY CHANGES? DOUG: The management team has mostly stayed in place but I've moved from the role of CEO to executive chairman. John Weber, previously of CooperVision, became the new CEO in November