«In the Experience Center we plan the future»- Corriere.it

The Tortona Experience Center opens its doors in Milan, Tec in acronym, 9 thousand square meters, the new digital laboratory of the Essilux group, the last stage of the innovation path that Leonardo Del Vecchio had outlined. We have opened a construction site, a continuous evolution that takes the group towards the future, says Francesco Milleri, president and CEO, the manager chosen by Del Vecchio to continue on the road. In recent days in Milan he met the Meta delegation for smart glasses and thinking about the future. Then, hundreds of customers from all over the world for the EssilorLuxottica Days, a sort of roadshow of the group’s innovative offer. Here, orders worth millions of glasses and lenses are collected. An important part of the revenues will also come from this week of meetings which reveals technologies and products not yet on the market to partners and which is held three times a year.

Glass walls twelve meters high

Del Vecchio had made time to see the new Tec in May. Here he had met Mark Zuckerberg, says Milleri. Between twelve-metre-high glass walls and digital surfaces, the new space tells the story of the group’s brands and production, integrating technological features with multimedia contents. It also houses communication spaces and open space offices, dedicated in particular to product development and retail, design and innovation teams. Tec a connection point between the market and the group. In the future that we already live here, there will no longer be spaces dedicated to work, exhibitions, sales or communication, but everything becomes contaminated. This structure is not just a place to understand the market, but a physical and digital space in which to share a common future with partners and redesign the sector. To create new worlds we need spaces open to new organizational models.

The digital schemes

Through the digital screens —about 30,000 that the group manages from Milan in direct and customer stores around the world — the visitor has access to all the products. He can wear them, change the color and the order is sent directly to the factories. a leading centre, the result of years of research and development by a team of designers and architects. It was a factory abandoned many years ago by General Electric. It took investments of over one hundred million to make it the tech center of the group, which has over 2,000 collaborators in Milan alone.

The integrated supply chain

a design with a strong technological content which in recent years has translated into the development of a completely interconnected vertically integrated supply chain, capable of networking ideas, factories and markets in real time. It allows Essilux to dialogue with hundreds of thousands of points of sale, interacting every day with tens of millions of consumers, explains Milleri. Which he adds: The limit for those who lead a company is often planning the future based on what exists today. With Leonardo Del Vecchio we have always tried to go further. In a global world it is necessary to network and look for contaminations with other realities and sectors because the entrepreneur who seeks answers only in his market is doomed to failure.