For Smithfield eyewear maker FXG, business is looking good

SMITHFIELD — Life is all in how you see it.

A company can look as if it’s ready to fade away, the record of its existence consigned to some forgotten archive of government records or a lawyer’s filing cabinet.

Then someone sees potential, sees a way to halt the downward spiral toward the discount-sales bin.

“In the summer of 2005, [the owners] almost sold the business,” said Alec Taylor, a Southerner with a ready smile and a sunny disposition.

Taylor is chairman and chief executive officer of FGX International, the Smithfield subsidiary of a nearly year-old public company, FGX International Holdings Ltd., of Tortola, British Virgin Islands (FGXI:NASDAQ). FGX designs and sells sunglasses, reading glasses and costume jewelry.

FGX is the descendant of Femic Inc., which started in 1971 as a Providence manufacturer of costume jewelry. The company sold jewelry and consumer goods for years before changing its name to Accessories Associates in 1986, and to AAi.FosterGrant a decade later, when it bought the long-established sunglasses brand.

This year, the reorganized company is on steady financial ground after its initial public offering last October and looks forward to net sales of more than $255 million, up about 6 percent from last year. Net sales then were $240.5 million, a 15-percent increase from 2006 sales of $209.2 million.

“We’ve had nice revenue growth,” said Taylor, a native Tennessean.

The revenue comes from selling nearly 70 million pairs of eyewear annually under brands such as FosterGrant, Magnivision, Body Glove, Ironman Triathlon, Levi Strauss Signature and others names.

Manufactured in factories overseas, the eyewear is sold in more than 50,000 retail locations, including mass merchandiser Wal-Mart, drugstore chain CVS and other outlets.

Taylor said he sees the reading-glass category as a steady, “recession proof” niche.

“We sell reading glasses every day of the year.”

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