The Greater Bay Area: In the Frame for Success

Over the past few decades Hong Kong's role as a key player in the international eyewear business has changed from a production base to a sales, marketing and enabling hub for some of the most high-profile names in the business. But a significant side of the industry – involving producers of key component parts which make up spectacle frames – often goes unseen.

One of the world’s foremost makers of these parts is Visottica Comotec , an Italian company which has been operating in Hong Kong since the 1980s. Backed by seven decades of experience and expertise, the firm’s production facility in Guangdong Province produces an eyewatering one billion component parts every year.

Those sales go mostly to factories in the mainland which produce eyewear frames for many of the best known brands in the world. In fact, southern China accounts for 70% of Visottica Comotec sales.

Hard to Replicate

Milani saw the continuous exchange of competence and knowhow between the Italian and Chinese locations makes Visottica Comotec manufacturing culture hard to replicate. She said: “We manufacture the component parts for eyewear frames, not the frames themselves. That means the inner workings of the legs, the hinges, and the nose pads.

“We are a business to business company, not a business to customer company; our customers are the factories which make the frames.”

The company believes its position as one of the most successful in the business lies in its ability to provide highly customised products supplied in small batches, as well as products from the standard catalogue with levels of standardisation which give forecast accuracy in relation to stock and in turn, shortens lead times, while guaranteeing a quick service and efficiency.

Environmentally Friendly

On top of Hong Kong’s position as an enabler for sales and marketing, thanks to its longstanding and deep connections to the international marketplace, Milani also believes that the culture of environmentally-friendly production capabilities will give Visottica Comotec an even greater edge as the GBA project unfolds and develops. She said: “It is our belief that our culture as company fits in with the greater appreciation and awareness of the need for properly regulated production procedures in the southern part of China. This is more apparent than in other parts of the country.”

“Building those regulatory practices into our company in recent years may have had its costs, but we believe that as the GBA initiative rolls out and develops, it will stand us in good stead. We are finding more and more that our customers are demanding products which fall in line with a growing level of global concern about the environment.”

Energy Saving

In pursuit of this green mission, Visottica Comotec recently developed a new eco-friendly material for use in the production of component parts which meets international regulatory standards – and saves on production costs.

Milani said: “Medical Eco-friendly Material (MEM) is a new and exclusive compound belonging to a family of thermoplastic elastomers. It does not contain dangerous or polluting elements and is developed in response to the request for an ecological material that complies with the international regulations aimed to protect health and the environment. ”

“Its processing reduces the quantity of plastic consumed and, consequently, a considerable energy saving during the whole manufacturing process.”

Dynamic and Young

Milani also believes that the innovative spirit and the appetite to embrace ground-breaking, high-tech and dynamic new products and production processes, is much more alive in the cities and special administrative regions which make up the GBA.

This means that it offers the chance to boost business in an organic way because buyers of their component parts in southern China are much more likely to suggest new ideas to the end customers in the big European eyewear companies.

“In the GBA, there are many young and dynamic businesspeople who are much more willing than their northern counterparts to take on new ideas and make suggestions to their customers about adopting them. This can only be for the growth of the company in the long run,” she said.