You can’t just impose German thinking on the Italians, says Collavo, not even German shop fitting. Because the Italians are suspicious of everything cheap at first. When Collavo fell out with a new boss and quit, Marc Fielmann immediately flew to Venice and offered him a contract. Two days later, the general manager of Dior also called and wanted to hire Collavo. But Fielmann had been quicker.

The conquest of Italy nevertheless remains a huge risk: 80 branches with long-term leases, with parquet flooring instead of carpeting and less cluttered shelves represent an enormous investment. “It costs money, energy, time, empathy and management attention that is lacking elsewhere”, says the manager of a competitor company. “Ultimately, international expansion is a trial by fire for Marc Fielmann. When it goes wrong, it hurts.”

His father always shied away from expanding into foreign countries; an attempt in Poland stalled at 20 branches early in the piece. To his son he said: If it doesn’t work in Italy, you have to go there and take care of it personally. Yet the son is doing nothing different in Italy than what his father did in Germany in the seventies. He moved into the undisturbed world of the small opticians’ shops “like a hawk into a henhouse”. This is how Günther Fielmann once described his rise. In Italy, opticians still wear gowns like they once did in Germany. Opticians stand at a counter and assess the appearance and income of whoever comes to them before pulling out a drawer and offering up a pair of glasses – a bit like in a pharmacy. The selection is small, the beautiful glasses are expensive, and repairs have to be paid for. And suddenly the hawk appears.

“Right from the start, we were the market leader in every city where we opened”, says Marc Fielmann. “The first branches are already profitable.” He is quietly pleased about this, but he would never say a sentence in which he himself appears as a bird of prey, not even in confidential company. He also never threw a chair across the office like his father. For a long time, Günther Fielmann risked bankruptcy for his company with every new idea. He was fought by competitors with delivery boycotts and threatened with death. He was in assertiveness mode most of his life. His father worked as a headmaster in Hamburg, knew everything better and brought him up in such an authoritarian way that he felt he had been drilled. He wasn’t ever allowed to say “Papa”. He didn’t get a bicycle or skates for moral reasons because other children did not have them either.

This was one of the reasons why Günther Fielmann later bought several Ferraris. And he took it upon himself not to drill his son. The company founder didn’t want any children for a long time. It was not until he was 48 that he married Heike Eggert, a 19-year-old student of German language and literature, who wanted to earn some extra money as a glasses model in his company. Marc was born the following year, followed five years later by Sophie, who is currently doing research in London and preparing her doctorate in neuropsychology. Father and brother would be happy if she also joined the company. Together, the family holds 71.64 percent of the shares. They get along well, even though their parents separated after twelve years. His father took Marc Fielmann to business appointments when he was just two years old. And announced to his employees: “One day, he will be your boss.”

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