Fort Worth is well known for its ties to agriculture, aviation and energy, but one of its major companies has brought the city international renown and scientific accolades, as well as provided jobs for thousands.
Alcon Laboratories, incorporated in 1947, may arguably be Fort Worth’s most successful startup. That’s certainly what Thomas McDonald would say, and now he’s written a book to back it up.
McDonald, a longtime Alcon employee, just published a book about the first 50 years of the company titled: “Alcon Laboratories — A Vision Fulfilled, 1947-1997.” The 450-page oversized book is published by TCU Press and retails for $54.95.
McDonald wants to spread the word about Alcon and the story of two men with a small pharmacy who grew it into a global leader in the eye care industry.
“My major goal, going forward, is to see every Alcon retiree buy a book, purchase it for their families and also purchase a copy to place in the library of their choice,” he said. “I want to populate libraries throughout the world with this remarkable story.”
Though now based in Geneva, Switzerland, Alcon is still investing in Fort Worth. At the Tuesday, Aug. 12, Fort Worth City Council meeting, officials will consider nominating the company for a tax abatement under the Texas Enterprise Zone Act to support a $40 million upgrade for the company’s main area campus at 6201 S. Freeway. As part of the project, Alcon will commit to retain 1,540 employees, with an average annual salary of $129,987.
McDonald is also working to get the book in schools of optometry around the world and wants business schools to purchase the volume as a case study about management principles.
“There is a lot to learn about business in this story,” he said. “A lot of people don’t realize that this company dominates the ophthalmic commercial world.”
Alcon got to that position with a focus on research and development, McDonald said.
Early on, the company was advised that it could not survive long without a research-and-development department creating new product pipelines. Then-CEO Ed Schollmaier attended a program at Harvard University to learn how to effectively use research and development.
Company at a glance
Alcon Laboratories:
- Was founded in Fort Worth in 1947.
- Has corporate headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, but maintains major operations in Fort Worth.
- Employs more than 25,000 associates, with about 3,000 in the DFW area.
- Reported first-quarter 2025 income of $468 million on sales of $2.5 billion.
McDonald quotes Schollmaier as saying the Harvard program “helped me get straightened out” about R&D.
“One thing about the company, when they needed to learn something, they would go out and get it done,” McDonald said. “That happened over and over.”
The company has also helped Fort Worth develop other entrepreneurs who have started companies after they left Alcon, among them the founders of Eosera and Encore Vision. But the list is long, McDonald said.
McDonald’s knowledge of Alcon Laboratories is deep. He went to work for the company after earning his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biology from TCU in the 1960s. He worked there for 39 years, retiring as vice president of the research and development department in 2004.
He is particularly proud of being part of the development of betoptic eye drops, an anti-glaucoma drug that was Alcon’s first product to garner $100 million in sales. It reduced pressure within the eye, he said.
“There had been anti-glaucoma products on the market before, but they had significant side effects. This one did not,” McDonald said.
McDonald wanted to let Fort Worth — and the world — know about the innovative, entrepreneurial spirit that Alcon engendered.
“And it’s right here in our backyard,” he said. “It ought to be celebrated, and I don’t feel enough people understand it.”
McDonald came to write his book after his retirement. He had already published a book about his ancestors who settled Texas’ Guadalupe River basin in the 19th century.
The idea to write about Alcon came from a conversation with Schollmaier, who led the company for 25 years. When McDonald told him about the book he was writing on his ancestors, Schollmaier suggested he write a book on the first 50 years of Alcon.
“That’s what got me started,” he said. “Ed was a great guy and, if he said something, I knew it was worth doing.”
Schollmaier, who died in 2021, was part of the company’s culture that fostered innovation from top to bottom, McDonald said.
Alcon was founded in 1945 as a small pharmacy in downtown Fort Worth named for its founders, pharmacists Robert Alexander and William Conner. The pair incorporated the company in 1947, having an eye early on for expansion and began developing products for eye care specialists.
The founders chose to focus on the eyes after successfully showing off the products they developed in their pharmacy. They demonstrated the products to doctors while traveling across the country, first to a Kiwanis International event in California and then to an American Academy of Ophthalmology conference in Chicago.
“They stopped at every eye care specialist on the way to talk about their products,” McDonald said. “That’s when they found out that there was a niche being unmet and focused on developing products for the eye care specialist.”
Early on, Conner and Alexander focused on quality, McDonald said.
“It also spilled over into hiring quality people, building quality facilities and so on. Quality was definitely one reason why it became successful,” McDonald said.
That quality focus meant the company took care of employees from the bottom to the top, McDonald said.
Alcon was an early adopter of profit-sharing, along with top-notch health insurance and other benefits to make all employees feel connected to the company’s success, he said.
Alcon was the second Fort Worth company to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1971. Charles Tandy’s Tandy Corp. was the first in 1960, McDonald said.
Alcon was also innovative in early on looking to expand internationally, in the days before the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport connected the area to the world.
“By 1997, fully 40% of the company’s sales were from overseas,” McDonald said.
Those overseas sales brought attention from foreign-owned companies.
The Swiss food company Nestlé acquired Alcon in 1977.
In 2010, Novartis purchased Alcon from Nestlé. In 2019, Alcon was spun off from Novartis to become an independent, publicly traded company headquartered in Geneva.
McDonald conducted his research by the oral histories of retirees like himself and by combing through company and Tarrant County archives.
“I’ve been very fortunate, Alcon has been very helpful with access to archives and such,” he said. “It’s a story they want told, too.”
Email Bob Francis, business editor for the Fort Worth Report, at bob.francis@fortworthreport.org.
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