The bankrupt Eiffel Optic chain of eyeglass stores identified the consequences of the coronavirus closures and the subsequent drop in consumer spending as the main reasons for its collapse. However, the company’s published financial statements show that its economy was strained already a year before the pandemic. In addition, some of the competitors were growing at the same time.
“For the entire period of its existence, the debtor was one of the important sellers of ophthalmic optics on the Czech market, when its turnover steadily reached the amount of 300 to 500 million crowns per year and the debtor reported profits in the order of millions of crowns for each accounting period,” Eiffel Optic stated in the insolvency proposal. which she applied to herself.
The editorial office of SZ Byznys reported on the fall of the Eiffel Optic network on Monday.
Claims about reported profits are supported by published financial statements. The company even accumulated 146 million crowns on the retained earnings account of previous years.
However, the turning point came even before covid – i.e. before the forced closures, which the company described in the insolvency proposal as the beginning of its problems. Eiffel Optic reported its first loss already in 2019. Despite sales exceeding 370 million crowns, the company fell into a loss of 3.4 million crowns. This was due, among other things, to rising costs, according to published accounting documents.
As for the main activity of the company itself, i.e. the sale of glasses and related goods, Eiffel Optic still had a positive operating result of 7.9 million crowns a year before the covid disaster. However, after adding up and subtracting all the items, the company reported a profit in the final result exceeding the mentioned three million.
At the time of the announced restrictions due to the covid pandemic, according to published information, Eiffel Optic received state support, similar to other companies. In total, she received 32.8 million crowns from the state. Eiffel Optic received the largest amount of 28.1 million crowns from the Labor Office from the Antivirus program. From it, the state contributed to the salaries of the affected companies.
Among the main competitors of Eiffel Optic, from the point of view of sellers betting on traditional brick-and-mortar stores, are, for example, the Fokus Optik or Grand Optical networks.
It is Grand Optical that is the largest of these companies in terms of sales. According to the latest published figures, it earned almost 819 million crowns for 2021. From this, the company managed to create a net profit of 137.5 million crowns. In this case, both indicators were significantly better than in the first covid year of 2020.
Another competitor, Fokus Optik, also reported an increase in turnover to 406 million crowns for 2021. In the case of this company, however, growing sales are not reflected in the economic result. According to the latest published data, the company has been making losses since 2019.
