Barcelona has a creative and entrepreneurial environment that helps initiatives born in the city and its surroundings grow and reach a global audience. The city represents an asset and a calling card for companies from all sectors, including fashion and jewelry. This is the case for internationally recognized brands such as Tous and Laagam, as explained by their corporate vice president, Rosa Tous, and the founder of the fashion brand, Inés Arroyo. They presented this in a new session of the cycle The New Barcelona – Moments Estel·lars, organized by The New Barcelona Post with the collaboration of CASA SEAT, Must Media Group and Barcelona Global.
https://youtu.be/DvrEZBY4Nws
Although Tous originated in a store in Manresa and Laagam had its seed in social media, Arroyo and Tous share values and points of view regarding the sector and how they conceive their projects. Thus, despite the disparity of their origins and being separated by the 100 years that Tous has accumulated and Laagam's seven, they have points in common, even related to the mottos that govern their companies: don't stop. "He who stops, loses," they say at Laagam. "Stopping is going backward," they warn at Tous, as both explained in a conversation moderated by journalist and UPF-BSM professor Toni Aira.
"It is important to have a vision of where you want to go, the mission and the values," defended Rosa Tous. "We want to be the most successful, desirable, and committed affordable jewelry and luxury brand" in the market. Furthermore, she warns that this mission must be reviewed recurrently, because "the environment changes and you have to be able to adapt." Thus, she sees it as key not to stop and to adapt to changes, which translates into initiatives and new products, such as the nail rings that have aroused the interest of the audience that witnessed the conversation. "They are sold out," smiles the vice president of Tous in reference to these novel rings. "At Tous, we are obsessed with innovation; it is not a department, it is an attitude," emphasizes the group's vice president.
Barcelona as a showcase
The member of the founding family of the jewelry brand has highlighted the contribution of the Catalan capital to the company's projection: "Barcelona was our showcase to the world." Tous has described it as a cosmopolitan city known worldwide: "Everyone knows where Barcelona is, what happens and what can happen in the city." For her part, Arroyo also considers the Barcelona brand key, and has praised its entrepreneurial and startup ecosystem: "The entrepreneurial environment is very big; I have a lot of connection with entrepreneurs from many sectors and we help each other a lot," she assures. Thus, despite registering 70% of its sales abroad, Laagam "speaks of Barcelona to the world. The Barcelona brand pulls a lot."
Both Laagam and Tous project themselves internationally from Barcelona also through proximity production. Arroyo's brand does so from various production points, among which she has cited Badalona, Sabadell, Terrassa and Barcelona itself. "You must be global but very close to your product," she stated. Tous agrees, detailing that 45% of its production is concentrated in its factory in Sabadell. In addition, they have a workshop in the city where the brand was born, Manresa. There, they receive intern students who are granted scholarships from various countries to train them in the repair and restoration of jewelry. And it is that "jewelry is a tremendously sustainable good, because you would never throw away a piece of jewelry," says Rosa Tous, also Reach and relevance officer of Tous.
Inspiration for women; women as inspiration
The fashion sector is different in this sense. "I am a fashion fanatic as a consumer," admitted the founder and creative director of Laagam. Following this passion, she wanted to launch a brand that was aimed at all types of people, always with a clear mission: "to inspire women to conquer the world." And Arroyo set out to do it not only through clothing, but by creating a community, using resources as alien to fashion as a podcast can apparently be, which focused on interviews with women to contribute to this inspiration. Her ultimate purpose? To be a recognized and recognizable brand and to bill 100 million euros. "Everything we do is to get there."
Just as Arroyo is the visionary of her project, for Tous's project it was the vice president's mother, and she also did it with a vision centered on womenThe founder of Laagam, who has applauded Tous' trajectory and its work to "democratize" jewelry, has taken advantage of the event not only to praise the Manresa brand, but also to launch a scoop: Laagam will open its first physical store in Rambla Catalunya. It will do so in two weeks, as a three-month trial, in a space that had previously housed a Bankinter office. The pop-up plans to open on November 17, and will do so on one of the main arteries of the Catalan capital. Not to mess around it could also be the brand's motto: "We've taken the plunge, it was the time to do it this way, or not do it, because retail is totally on the rise in the fashion world."
Although it is a temporary store, if the test works, the idea is to make it permanent in 2024, so Laagam is already looking for a definitive location in Rambla Catalunya that will mark the starting point of a new strategy also based on growth through physical stores. The idea is to open, simultaneously, a store in Madrid and, with local partners, two more points of sale in the United States and Amsterdam (Netherlands), its two key international markets. According to Arroyo, "consumers have returned to the physical experience," so Laagam's entry into the offline channel is strategic for the company. "We see a back to the basics; we bet on entering our own retail because it is the future of fashion," assures the entrepreneur.
Thanks to the opening of its own physical stores, Laagam expects to double its turnover in 2024. The idea is to close 2023 with revenues of five million euros, 66% more than the three million it earned in 2022, but the goal is to reach 10 million in 2024 thanks to the retail division.
From counters to social media
Just as Arroyo is the visionary of her project, for Tous it was the corporate vice president's mother. And she also did it with a vision focused on women: in the 1970s, she realized that they needed jewelry beyond what they received as gifts for special occasions. "Women start working and want to have freedom of decision and wear the jewelry they want," and not just have pieces reserved for certain occasions, Tous explained. In Manresa, her parents promoted jewelry design, which had a turning point with a trip to Italy in 1985 from which her mother returned with a souvenir: a teddy bear. "What can we do with this?" was the question she posed, which led to the creation of Tous's iconic image. "The bear awakens tenderness, without being a heart," she states, after assuring that the brand has not disowned this icon, but over the years has modulated its use. "Sometimes we have the bear more hidden, but that doesn't mean we disown it, on the contrary, what we do is take care of it, try not to burn it out," explains the executive.
Hand in hand with that emblematic bear, Tous opened a store in Lleida, and in 1989 arrived in Barcelona, which implied a "very important leap." The opening in the Catalan capital represented a boom for the brand, as it offered from a small store in Pedralbes Center "a jewelry format completely different from what the Barcelona client could see at that time." The establishment that opened in 1992 on Passeig de Gràcia provided the promoter of the unique figure with one of the greatest pleasures of her life: sitting behind the counter to watch the clientele pass by, according to her daughter and now vice president of the brand. Based on its growth, they realized that Tous had to expand abroad, and began to test markets such as the Japanese and German, with steps that have led to the current internationalization. From Manresa, to Barcelona; from Barcelona, to the world.
Arroyo considered launching an online brand that would differentiate itself not only by its product, but especially by its communityThe origin of Laagam was diametrically different. Seven years ago, Arroyo was triumphing on Instagram sharing outfits, fashion shows, and brands while studying Business Administration and interning at various companies linked to fashion and jewelry. She did so until, encouraged by her partner and her brother, she decided to create her own company. Arroyo, who defines herself as a digital native, considered launching an online brand that would differentiate itself not only by its product but also by its community: "I wanted it to go beyond clothing."
https://open.spotify.com/episode/2p7csdyEA5wquYdmlIdbmj?si=fAUh1T-mS_qolzIvrjAr2Q
Thus, drawing on experiences from other brands and always attentive to successful initiatives from other sectors as well, she set out to create a powerful community around her product. And, true to her motto, she never stops: in recent years, the company has launched Laagam Prime with benefits for an annual subscription, and sales via Whatsapp inspired by initiatives from China, which she then moved to Twitch, until this social network also became too small for her needs. "We are a laboratory for the fashion sector, we are constantly doing new things. At Laagam we always tell our team that it's better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission," Arroyo emphasizes. And all under a name that sparks the curiosity of attendees. Laagam, for what reason? Arroyo didn't want a brand with her name or translatable into Spanish or Catalan. She finally stumbled upon the Swedish word lagom, which means "not too much, not too little, but just enough." Perhaps the same as providing Barcelona and its ecosystem of creativity to local brands like these: just what is needed to project themselves globally and become benchmarks.