Congrats are in order to supporters of Vancouver, Canada-based online optical pioneer Coastal Contacts, which announced a friendly sale to France's Essilor International Thursday for $435 million or $12.45 per share.

See: Globe and Mail, Bloomberg and Vancouver Sun coverage.

Roger, Hardy, Coastal, Contacts

Roger Hardy, Coastal’s chairman, chief executive officer and founder, owns 10.7% of the company’s shares, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Photo: Postmedia News

Essilor gains five million customers and a system for providing eye ware consumers with custom glasses and contact lenses at prices of up to 75% off traditional optical retailers.

We toured Coastal's Vancouver headquarters in July 2013 when the stock was trading at $5 and were impressed with the efficiency and scale of the operation, but didn't buy any shares unfortunately.

My site visit was at the urging of Vancouver stock promoter Gianni Kovacevic, who has been an investor in the company since 2007, and helped founder, Chairman and CEO Roger Hardy (pictured) tell the story at investment conferences in Europe and through Kovacevic's MEDAP newsletter ($249/year).

Kovacevic speculates a better offer may still come forward for Coastal, possibly from industry juggernaut Luxxotica.

Kovacevic says he will re-invest a portion of his proceeds in Vancouver-technology incubator LX-Ventures, which one of our writers criticized on Wednesday.

We will publish an interview with LX-Ventures CEO Mike Edwards in the next couple of days.