care founded 1961 founder stanley pearle headquarters savannah georgia united states products eyewear glasses sunglasses parent luxottica website www.pearlevision.com pearle optical is an american chain of eye care stores . it was founded by stanley pearle an optometrist in savannah georgia united states in 1961 . he also founded pearle vision market name in the united states and its express store pearle express in the same year . stanley pearle sold his stores to grand metropolitan conglomerate based in the united kingdom . 6 years later grand metropolitan sold the stores in the united states canada and puerto rico to cole national corporation . the belgium stores were sold to gib based in belgium and the dutch stores to hal investments based in the netherlands . hal investments bought the belgium stores 1 year later from gib and merged both chains into pearl benelux . the north american pearle vision stores are currently owned by the italian company luxottica after the takeover of cole national corporation in 1996 . the pearle chain of opticians in europe is now part of grandvision and has more than 1000 branches in 43 countries including the netherlands belgium germany austria poland portugal italy finland and estonia . for more than 40 years the company has been selling branded products and products under its own brand name . the first pearle optical store in the middle east opened in marina mall kuwait on january 15 2003 and currently operates 18 stores in the middle east 4 in kuwait 10 in ksa 3 in uae 5 in egypt and 1 in qatar . in the 1970s pearle vision acquired the new york area hillman kohan chain 1 and in 1997 under ownership of cole national corporation pearle vision bought out the 150 store nuvision chain in michigan . 2 pearle vision store revere massachusetts notably pearle vision has repeatedly experienced difficulty operating successfully in california . its traditional business model directly conflicts with california s strong consumer protection statutes which are designed to prevent the obvious conflict of interest that arises when an optometrist and an optician practice side by side in the same business one can prescribe more eyewear to be made by the other thus inflating the overall profits of the business . on june 12 2006 the supreme court of california ruled that pearle vision could not escape the reach of those statutes and pearle vision s attempts to find a loophole through the knox keene health care service plan act of 1975 were unavailing . 3 stanley pearle died on july 21 2011 . he is survived by three children 10 grandchildren and 11 great grandchildren . references edit the eyes still have it . inc. magazine . nov 1 1987 . retrieved 2015 09 01 . standard & poor s creditweek google books . books.google.com . 2011 02 23 . retrieved 2013 08 28 . people v. cole 38 cal . 4th 964 2006 . external links edit official website consumeraffairs.co this united states corporation or company article is a stub . you can help wikipedia by expanding it . v t e retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title pearle vision & oldid 733949099 categories eyewear retailers of the united statesunited states company stubshidden categories pages using infobox company with unsupported parametersall stub articles navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version languages nederlands edit links this page was last modified on 11 august 2016 at 04 17 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; additional terms may apply . by using this site you agree to the terms of use and privacy policy . wikipedia is a registered trademark of the wikimedia foundation inc. a non profit organization . privacy policy about wikipedia disclaimers contact wikipedia developers cookie statement mobile view