Uvex

www.uvex.com.au

J24 Uvex Event Flyer

The uvex brand (uv-ex = ultraviolet excluded) was first introduced in the sixties by Rainer Winter, managing director of UVEX WINTER HOLDING, based in Fürth, Germany, for a line of sunglasses. It soon turned into an umbrella brand for all their sports products and was then extended from the mid-seventies onwards to include the safety division.

From this point on, all sports and leisure products (ski, cycling and motorbike helmets, ski, cycling, motorbike and sports eyewear and motorbike clothing) made by UVEX SPORTS GmbH & Co. KG, Fürth, and all the products in the industrial sector (protective eyewear, helmets, hearing and hand protection, safety footwear and workwear) made by UVEX SAFETY GROUP GmbH & Co. KG., Fürth, were brought together under one brand: uvex.

In order to create a presence in the US market, a subsidiary company, UVEX WINTER OPTICAL, Inc., was founded in 1980 in Smithfield, Rhode Island. This subsidiary also produced protective eyewear in its own factory. The nationwide breakthrough was made in the beginning of the nineties with the uvex astrospec model which shortly after entering the market, reached a sales volume of 2 million pairs per year in the USA alone. Today the astrospec is still the most successful safety spectacle in the world, having sold more than 100 million pairs.

In 1993, the uvex safety division was gradually sold to the French Bacou Group, including trademark rights in the USA. The sports division, however, was retained in full by the uvex group.

As a result, in the Western Hemisphere (North, Central and South America) the uvex brand name related to the safety division is now only used by the Bacou-Dalloz Group. In the Eastern Hemisphere (Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa) the trademark rights are still held by uvex Deutschland (Germany).