"When Alejandro Betancourt López took the helm at Hawkers in November 2016, the Spanish sunglasses company was bleeding cash. Despite projecting €70 million in revenue that year, the company achieved only €60 million, and a key subsidiary reported losses that had escalated by 500 percent. The founders were contemplating shutting down operations entirely. What happened next offers a case study in crisis management and calculated decision-making under pressure."
""Fashion brands are valued at very low multiple levels because you don't know for how long they're going to be sustainable," Alejandro Betancourt López observed. "Hawkers, for example, you have to convince everybody in the market to buy a pair of sunglasses every day and put a lot of marketing and wake up the next day and do the same all over and all over and all over. So it's a very, very, very hard sustainable company to keep sustainable over time.""
Alejandro Betancourt López led a €50 million investment round in October 2016 through O'Hara Administration and became Hawkers' largest shareholder; one month later the board appointed him president. Hawkers began in 2013 when four university friends launched an online sunglasses brand selling trendy pairs at €20–40, undercutting premium brands and leveraging low-cost Facebook advertising to scale quickly. By 2016 rapid growth created supply and margin problems, projected revenue missed targets, a subsidiary reported sharply increased losses, and broader Spanish consumer weakness and competitive discounting squeezed profitability and sustainability.
Read at London Business News | Londonlovesbusiness.com
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