Dani Clará (Rosa Clará): "I want to keep innovating without losing the DNA"

Rosa Clará is a wedding dress brand that is present in 4,000 points of sale in 83 countries. And Rosa Clará is the founder and owner of the company ---now, together with her son, Dani Clará---, a strong, sweet, and passionate woman, who has remained quite hidden from the spotlight, although she hasn't always been able to. The company has grown and professionalized, and Rosa, as she says, is "de-escalating," with a crazy desire to be a grandmother to her granddaughter, Chloe. The company faces the future with optimism, strengthened because one day Dani said: "---I'm staying". "Otherwise, we would have ended up like most Catalan family businesses, selling the company," Rosa acknowledges.

Dani professionally joined Rosa Clará in 2020, after studying architecture and completing specific business training in China and the US. But above all, after a lifetime surrounded by patterns, rolls of fabric, and chantilly embroidery. Because Dani knows that he holds the future of the company in his hands, but also that, without Dani, there would have been no company.

In 1995, Rosa Clarà opened her first store because, when her son was born, she decided she didn't want to travel. She had started Law, then design, and was responsible for stores in what was then the leading bridal company in Spain and an expanding brand. Until Dani was born. "I left my previous job because I wanted to take care of this child, who in the end is the most important thing in my life. And the solution was not to travel, to be in Barcelona and be able to sleep at home every night". That was the plan, she says. "But the plan lasted 5 minutes!"

Everything started to go so well that the first thing she remembers is that "we could have died of success." They presented their first collection at the NoviaEspaña fair, "and we had so many orders that the problem was: how do we manufacture it? It was brutal." What she did was "go see everyone and tell them: I will pay. Before I stop paying, I will die. But I need you to do it for me in 180 days instead of 90. And by showing my face and seeing people, well, a lot of people respond." In those early years, they already started measuring success in m²: they had started in a 150 m² ground floor in Calàbria street, and after each new season, they ended up renting the adjoining premises, and another, and another, until they almost had the entire interior of the block. Then they built a 5,000 m² building in l'Hospitalet, "and I said, how are we going to fill this?"

For years, Rosa moved around Barcelona on a Vespa, taking designs and fabrics to the workshops and dressmakers she had spread across the city. At that time, Rosa Clarà was one of the few visible female entrepreneurs in the country, and at times she played a role as a reference: "But I didn't feel anything in that role. I had so much work that I wasn't interested in other things: I had two children, Dani and the company, and that's what worried and occupied me from the beginning."

An important step was the incorporation of Manuel Cano as general director in 2014: "He brought a lot of order. Because until then I thought: if I disappear, this cannot disappear."

Dani remembers playing with patterns as a child, and he saw his mother more as an businesswoman than a designer ("I wasn't aware of that, how funny!", says Rosa). But it took him a while to see his future: "All my friends were studying Business Administration, and I opted for Architecture, because it combined numbers and creativity."

— Rosa Clará: I remember the moment when he told me: 'I'm going to study architecture.' And I had a poker face.

— Dani Clará: It wasn't vocational at all, but it was a good choice. It's a career that organizes your mind, and I enjoyed it a lot.

Dani chose to study at LaSalle, at a time when Rosa Clará's headquarters in l'Hospitalet and Sant Just had already become too small. And right in front of La Salle there were some office buildings, available. Rosa set up her new headquarters there.

— D. C.: She is very... subtly forceful like that.

— R.C.: I thought: if I bring him closer, maybe... No pressure, because I never told him: "Come work at our house." But I set up shop right here in front and built him an office, where he could do his architecture projects.

— D. C.: He just had to cross the street. Little by little, I started picking up little things. And suddenly I was already working for her. And I say to her... "How did you do it?"

Dani finished his degree, his internships with Jean Nouvel in Paris and with GMP in Shanghai.

— R.C.: I had already assumed he wouldn't come. But one day at lunch, he tells me, just like he does everything, "I've decided that I'm not going to be an architect and that I'm going to work with you." I almost fainted. And I told him: Go ahead, welcome! But you have to prepare yourself.

First Dani went to Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, to learn Chinese well ("the company's plan now is to grow in the United States, but in the long term it will be in Asia: and knowing Chinese you enter in a different way"). And then he completed a business master's degree at Babson College. "I needed to learn the language of business. I was doing internships here: I was the intern and went everywhere."

— R.C.: With Manuel, we made him a program, and he went through all departments and buildings, this has given him a vision that I don't have. And we gave him a suitcase and told him to go see all the hostile clients in the United States… Amore, open doors!

— D. C.: D: They made me a welcome pack that… (Dani laughs). I started near my mother, in product. I came with new ideas, but they didn't pay any attention to me. Out of 10, I got one right!

— R.C.: In this house, we work very fast, and at first, he was a bit slow!

Rosa, with Pedro del Olmo, head of product, have been working together for thirty years, and they no longer even need to speak to know what to do.

— D. C.: At first, I got lost with them. Then I focused on other areas, and now I have to refocus on being with them: with Rosa, Pedro, and with Manuel, learning.

Dani Clarà is responsible for the image and brand, and everything related to marketing, product, and sales worldwide. And he controls the shootings of the 24 collections each year: 80 days of filming around the world, to capture the moments ---without rain, mud, wind, or clouds?--- that must make wedding dresses sell worldwide.

— R.C.: I think I have known how to delegate, that I have known how to surround myself with good professionals. And Dani has been the driving force for us to continue investing.

— D. C.: And he does it very well! It won't be easy, because my mother's vision and intuition for knowing which way to go is surely much more powerful than what I can have right now.

— R.C.: No, it's different!

— D. C.: But it must be difficult to let me make mistakes.

— R.C.: You don't make mistakes either!

— D. C.: Luckily we haven't made mistakes, but you let us do it.

The conversation between mother and son flows very naturally, with complicit glances and affectionate hand gestures. "Everything is happening in a natural way, without rush, in a very easy way," they both say. "Everything is well structured, and now we are preparing a significant investment, to concentrate the company's facilities, with the rapid growth we are experiencing we are a bit disorganized. In Barcelona, they have 500 direct employees (and 1,000 indirect worldwide, including stores, exclusive workshops). "Now the project is to unify the headquarters in l'Hospitalet, expanding into a warehouse next to the original building. We will have 22,000 m²." The planned investment is 20 million euros. It is a project they have been pursuing for three years, and they would like it to be completed before 2027. In 2023, the company invoiced 71 million euros.

— R.C.: And the other big current investment is to grow in the United States. We have been there for 15 years, in multi-brand, and now we have a plan to open 15 stores, on our own. With our own resources, without capital injection.

In the world, their competition is basically local, they say, and some big American or Australian brands, "but the concept is different."

— D. C.: We have something very good: our brides. The one who wants a Rosa Clará, wants a Rosa Clará: because it is a product that gives them a distinct, European touch.

— R.C.: And they travel the necessary kilometers to try on our dresses.

"We have something very good: our brides. The one who wants a Rosa Clará, wants a Rosa Clará"

— R.C.: We have had many offers, and we continue to have them. But I believe it is not in our immediate plans, we don't need it. We have been very foresighted, we have not squandered the company's money, we have not distributed too many dividends, we have reinvested during these 30 years. This served us very well during COVID times and serves us very well in these moments of expansion. Now I believe we are fine. And in the future, he (Dani) will have to decide.

— D. C.: It's very good to have something very much our own, very controlled. The strategy for growth is to do it well.

— R.C.: If you want to sell the company, you approach growth differently. Having an investment partner would make perfect sense if what they wanted was to sell the company the day after tomorrow. But we pursue very solid growth.

"We have been very foresighted, we have not squandered the company's money, nor have we distributed too many dividends"

— R.C.: Working has never scared me. But the hard part of these 30 years has been the attacks against us. They were meant to destabilize me and keep me from my work. We suffered a lot. But I didn't get distracted! I've been brave, or daring! One day I might like to tell it properly, we even thought about making a Netflix series. But we came to the conclusion that I want to live peacefully.

Rosa continued working and managed to stay away from the headlines, which is not easy when the person and the company share the same first and last name.

— R.C.: I always had it very clear that my private life was separate, that I wouldn't show my closet anywhere, in any magazine or publication. That I would appear in magazines and media because of my company. But Dani never appeared until he told me he wanted to work here: well, now it's your turn! But I have never shown my private life.

We did see her in magazines on the day of her wedding to Josep Artigas, in 2013.

— R.C.: We live off this! However, I warned the journalists in Barcelona: 'No famous people are coming to the wedding, you don't need to do anything.' But when we arrived at Plaça Sant Jaume, it was full of press! And in 2023, in Paris, when Dani got married, without us intending it, I assumed it would be talked about, and it was a worldwide advertising campaign, because Anne-Marie was really beautiful ("and you too, eh?", she tells Dani).

Now, with Dani well-established in the company, Rosa wants to enjoy Chloe, to start retiring.

— D.C.: It's us who are holding her back!

— R.C.: What I couldn't enjoy with my son, I now definitely want to enjoy with my granddaughter as much as I can.

— D.C.: My wish is to continue innovating without losing the DNA. I believe the best thing my mom has done is the brand identity.

And how is that brand identity defined?

— D.C.: I have it very clear. I'll give you an example: there's a chantilly that we put between the layers of fabric, it's made with an 18th-century loom in a workshop in northern France, which we have exclusively. If you changed it, nothing would happen. But it's very much our identity, that sensitivity for details.

"Value what you have at that moment, because tomorrow you might no longer have it"