The Cooper Companies, Inc., branded as CooperCompanies, is a global medical device company, publicly traded on the NYSE. With its headquarters in San Ramon, California, it has a workforce of more than 12,000 employees and consists of two business units, CooperVision which manufactures contact lenses, and CooperSurgical which manufactures medical devices and fertility and genomic products for the women’s health care market.
History
CooperCompanies was founded in 1958 as Martin H. Smith Co. and later incorporated as Cooper Tinsley Laboratories Inc. in 1961. The company changed its name to Cooper Laboratories Inc. in 1967. Cooper Laboratories entered the contact lens business in 1972 when it acquired British lens maker GlobalVision. In 1980, Cooper Laboratories reorganized into three business groups: CooperVision, CooperCare and CooperBiomedical, with Cooper Medical DevicesCorp. added as a fourth group one year later. The company was renamed The Cooper Companies in 1987. Three years later, the company was further restructured into three business units: CooperVision, CooperSurgical and CooperVision Pharmaceuticals. The latter was dissolved in 2003. Today, CooperCompanies operates as two business units: CooperVision and CooperSurgical, which have continued to grow through various acquisitions and expansions. Albert G. White III was named President and CEO of CooperCompanies in May 2018.
CooperVision is the contact lens unit of CooperCompanies, serving contact lens wearers and eye care practitioners. CooperVision was incorporated in 1980 and today is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of soft contact lenses. Its contact lenses and related products are sold to eye care practices in over 100 countries. Products include a range of daily, two-week and monthly disposable contact lenses, and other spherical, toric and multifocal lenses for astigmatism, nearsightedness and farsightedness, and presbyopia. CooperSurgical is the medical device and fertility and genomics unit of CooperCompanies. CooperSurgical became a business unit of the company in 1990. It has over 600 products primarily used by women’s health care providers in their offices, clinics, operating rooms, labor, and delivery suites and reproductive IVF clinics worldwide.
