From 3 to 5 February 2024, all eyes will be on MIDO, the world leader in eyewear trade shows. For three days, stakeholders from all five continents will meet in Fieramilano Rho to discover the companies which represent the entire supply chain of the eyewear industry, in an international setting.
WMIDO is allowing some of the MIDO 2024 exhibiters to voice their opinions. Today’s interview is with Christoph Rosenauer, COO of Gernot Lindner.
Sustainability is a global priority, requiring businesses to respond accordingly to create a better future for us all. MIDO has been an active leader in the drive towards sustainability, creating two awards that reward and recognize those brands that achieve high levels of sustainability. The Certified Sustainable Eyewear (CSE) Award evaluating the sustainability of eyewear products internationally, and Stand Up For Green, recognizing brands that prioritize environmental protection. How does your company approach the issue of sustainability? What activities do you carry out that support the future of the planet?
Sustainability is an issue that concerns us day in, day out and influences our decisions in both private and corporate terms, as we have a transregional and transgenerational responsibility and should be aware of this.
For this reason, we tried early on to establish sustainability management at various levels.
In the area of energy, we started reducing our emissions years ago and not only operate a photovoltaic system that produces the majority of the electricity for our company and charges our e-vehicles, but also heat with locally produced wood pellets.
All the packaging we use is recyclable, from our wooden case to the outer carton. Our silver glasses themselves are produced in such a way that 100% of the metal waste is melted down and fully recycled.
We also try to source our purchased parts from local suppliers as far as possible in order to guarantee short transportation routes.
We know that committed employees contribute significantly to the success of our company and, conversely, we feel a responsibility for everyone who is part of our team. This is reinforced by the fact that our region has been and continues to be affected by massive job losses, particularly in the eyewear industry. We are therefore aware that we have a social responsibility for our region and try to make our business decisions with the public interest in mind. We achieve this not only by keeping jobs in the region in the long term and creating new ones, but also through employee-friendly working time models that help to achieve a family-friendly work-life balance.
Young people are our future. Being close to them and responding to their needs is not always easy. MIDO, in this sense, always tries to keep up with the times and experiment: it was the first Industry Fair in the sector to have a digital magazine, to use a dedicated ap and reacted quickly to the COVID crisis by creating a digital platform. In 2024, MIDO was also the first in the industry to create a communication campaign using AI. How does your company try to reach younger people?
We believe that at least a significant percentage of the youth is becoming increasingly attracted to a concept of handcrafted products, and not just for reasons of sustainability. We live in a time in which the fact that products are 100% made in Europe or Germany is the exception and therefore appreciated. However, I couldn't say that we are specifically trying to reach a younger audience, but rather one that has an affinity for high design and product quality.
A 'hot' topic in 2023 is the increasing use of AI. MIDO, as we said, also used it in support of human creativity, to create the industry's first communication campaign. What do you think about the use of AI in your industry? Have you used it, and do you plan to use it in the future?
To be honest, I have problems with the term AI. Just like my smartphone is not smart, I would be careful in attributing intelligence to AI. Until recently, going back to René Descartes (with whom I disagree in this respect), we didn't attribute intelligence to non-human animals. They were considered "rex extensa" like machines and only humans were considered to be "res cogitans" and now we pretend that machines have the potential to be intelligent? I find this a disconcerting and to a certain point an unreflective development. Even though I know that there is not only no universal definition of intelligence, and we have different forms of intelligence in humans and other living beings, I could not recognize any that would be recognizable in machines and artificial neural networks. I consider the fact that a machine has been programmed to simulate processes and apply algorithms and to process large amounts of data quickly to be noteworthy, but I would not describe it as intelligence. I see it as a tool to simplify certain data-intensive processes, but so far, I have been less enthusiastic about the intelligence of the programs than concerned about the intelligence of those people who have described such programs as intelligent.
Nevertheless, I am convinced that what is commonly referred to as AI will become part of our everyday working lives, with a number of positive effects and some negative ones and we will certainly make use of what runs under the name of AI in our design and production processes, but whether these programs and tools are going to be intelligent remains to be seen.
Why did you choose silver to create your frames?
Silver is a material that has always fascinated people due to its properties, beauty, and rarity. Silver was used relatively early on to make spectacles due to its good workability. Modern material requirements, the price and mass production meant that there were hardly any spectacles made from this beautiful material.
So, it was our love of the material, the fact that silver does not cause allergies, that we can recycle all material waste and that we have also made some technical developments in our company that made us decide to try to launch this collection on the market.
