90%+ of the best frames are made in Italy. Back then, the factories would be completely shut down in July and August so no new frames were shipped. Only what was already stocked in US warehouses.
If frames were ordered in July, it could take until September to get one that wasn't in stock. Sometimes you wouldn't get them at all after being promised for months. That would make everyone down the line look bad. Even more ridiculous is that you could not order many of the most popular sunglasses by mid-summer. Everyone lost lots of business because of the closures.
Naturally, most of the cheaper frames are now being made in China to Italian specs. Most are in now stock and there is much less of a “lost summer” for optics retailers. I'm sure those who ran the factories in Italy feel stupid now...
Seems like a previous life, but when I was out of college I worked for a German hydraulic seal company.
They had a lot of interesting products, very high quality, but their delivery time was 8-12 weeks. In August, they just shut down, so add 4 weeks. Then it took much of September to fully ramp up production, so probably add another 2. Of course, the Christmas holiday season was but a few months later...
You can imagine what it’s like to tell a customer that it will take 18 weeks just to make the part (about 35% of a year, BTW), and then you have to import it and clear it through customs.
Most people could have understood with large machinery/ships/etc. that have a planned annual maintenance and parts ordered well in advance. But the smaller stuff? You can get the cylinder remachined almost anywhere in the U.S., to fit whatever’s on the shelf at any competitor, in less than 18 weeks, and once that cylinder’s been altered, you’re no longer a vendor pretty much forever.
We struggled for years trying to get them to understand they were slowly bleeding to death by their own hand. Made some headway, but the union over there wasn’t convinced and resisted any sort of change, and the government and banks backed the union (at least that’s what we were told).
They eventually went under a few years after I left, after something like 100+ years of continuous business.