ABBA Eye Care of Colorado Springs sold to Texas-based chain

Colorado Springs-based mostly ABBA Eye Care has been offered to a Texas business that plans to grow from about 90 to as many as 300 areas within five years via acquiring regional eyecare companies and optometry practices.

Acuity Eyecare group, owned by Dallas-based private equity funding enterprise Riata Capital neighborhood, purchased ABBA and Lincoln, Neb.-based EyeCare Specialties last month, however the transaction wasn’t introduced except Jan. 8. The company also landed “a considerable fairness funding” to aid its persisted increase and expansion from money and debts informed by using J.P. Morgan Asset administration.

“Our formulation is to buy the enterprise and maintain the DNA of the business in location. we are creating a community of local providers and we want to keep the native brand in location,” Acuity CEO Eric Anderson pointed out Tuesday. Founder Dr. Marcus Meyer “changed into very cautious about who to promote his business to and wanted to preserve his legacy in respectable arms. We construct on the success of particular person entrepreneurs through giving the suppliers and personnel entry to substances to do their jobs better.”

ABBA operates 5 locations in the Colorado Springs enviornment, two in Pueblo and one each in Alamosa, Aurora, Gunnison, La Junta, Lamar and Pagosa Springs. The chain was started in 1978 with the aid of Meyer, who retired after the sale however reinvested one of the sale fee into Acuity. ABBA employs 200 and offers eye exams, lots of different imaginative and prescient care capabilities, prescription and non-prescription glasses, shades and call lenses.

EyeCare Specialties become started greater than two decades in the past by way of three optometrists and now operates 5 areas in southeastern Nebraska and a imaginative and prescient remedy health facility.

Acuity was begun very nearly two years ago with the acquisition of Crown vision center in St. Louis, Eyetique in Pittsburgh and overseas Eyecare Care in Quincy, ill., and almost immediately after introduced Malbar vision in Nebraska. The business in March brought the 5 region One Hour Optical within the Denver area and 20/20 image Eye facilities within the Phoenix enviornment. With the latest acquisitions, Acuity now operates essentially 90 places in eight states and the primary appear Lab near St. Louis, and expects to extend to more than one hundred locations quickly, in accordance with different offers in the works.

Riata became begun in 1991 and has completed more than a hundred and forty acquisitions totaling $4 billion in North American company services, purchaser and fitness care industries. some of Riata’s principals organized and led the acquisition in 2011 of vision source, a Houston enviornment-based mostly chain of optometry practices that grew from 2,300 to greater than three,a hundred and fifty locations before it offered in 2015 to Essilor u . s ..