PADOVA, Italy— Sàfilo Group (SFL: MI) CEO Claudio Gottardi tells VMail that the company’s additional retail acquisitions in Mexico and Australia, announced Tuesday, are part of Sàfilo's intention “to build a retail organization worldwide, via acquisitions and some organic expansion.” Gottardi said expansion averaging 100 to 200 stores annually for the next five years will bring the company to the point where retail revenues represent about 20 percent to 25 percent of total group revenues by 2011-2012.

The majority of Sàfilo's worldwide stores will be sunglass-only, he said. However, the company has engaged an outside brand-consulting firm to evaluate a new ophthalmic-eyewear chain approach, which will debut “in certain markets.” Gottardi told VMail, “We are at the end of a very long process and are determining our final steps on this, and we’ll probably be ready to talk about the new optical brand in about a month’s time.”

Gottardi pointed out that with the previously reported acquisition of the Mexican chain, Sunglass Island, and the Australian chain, Just Spectacles, along with the group’s Loop chain in Spain and Solstice Marketing Concepts in North America, the company now has four operative organizations in the world’s principal continents, “allowing us to pursue our long-term strategic project.”

He said, “Our expansion is not focused in any particular country; rather, we are looking to build a regional presence where it makes sense. We feel it’s important, with the brands we represent, that we have a retail environment that can present these collections as we need them to be.

“Much as we did with Solstice in the U.S.—where we saw the need to consistently provide our sunwear brands with the right high-end retail presence 12 months of the year—many of the same market factors exist in other countries around the world.”

Gottardi added, “We have spent much of the past year putting together the experienced management team and infrastructure to help us do this. We found key managers who come to us with a great deal of experience and know-how, to grow our organization on a worldwide basis in the U.S., Australia/South Pacific, Europe and China.

“When we have looked at acquisitions,” he continued, “it has been with a goal of finding infrastructure in certain markets to give us the backbone to build from. We feel this is very much the case in Australia, where we can look at building throughout the South Pacific area. And via the organization in Mexico, and through our experience with Loop in Spain, we found a base that can take us into other countries in Latin America and into the Caribbean, too.” In China, Gottardi noted, the company has not found this solid existing base, so the group has taken to opening its own stores in that market.