There are companies that have a history. And there are those that, over the years, end up turning this history into a way of understanding the world. Fluidra is one of these companies. And Eloi Planes covered a good part of this path in a new session of the True Leaders cycle, organized by The New Barcelona Post and EY at the firm's Barcelona headquarters.
He spoke about business, governance, crisis, succession, and acquisitions. But, above all, he spoke about people. About those who are there when everything goes well and those who are there when everything falters. About parents and children, mentors, partners, and teams. The history of a company explained, ultimately, through the people who made it possible.
As he himself said, his story, and that of Fluidra, could perfectly have the structure of a series. And in the first season, the protagonist is an Eloi Planes who did not want to work, precisely, in the family business. He was studying engineering, programming computer systems with a friend, and had created a small company. But there was a more pressing urgency: he wanted to buy a red R4 and had no money. It was then that his father offered him a job: "we need you to make little drawings with the computer". It was 1994. And so, between necessity and chance, began the relationship with the company of his life.
The most important thing about those first years, however, was that he did not work directly with his father. He had Antonio as a reference, the founder's right-hand man, who would act as a mentor to the second generation, "the hinge" -as he called it- between one generation and the other.
Perhaps that distance was providential. His father was, at the same time, "my great friend" but also someone with whom he could discuss intensely. Planes explains one of these discussions in a New York restaurant and, in the anecdote, all the complexity of a relationship made of affection, trust, and character appears.
From family business to the stock market
In 2002, a first leap arrived. Fluidra began to take the form of an integrated group, Banc Sabadell entered the shareholding, and Planes assumed increasingly greater responsibilities. What had started as a job for Spanish companies first became a European responsibility and then a global one. "Everything was going very, very, very fast," he recalls. That speed would lead to a momentous decision: going public. Before that, however, there was a conversation with his father that Planes remembers as a lesson in governance.
It's one thing to be a manager and another to be a shareholder.
Sell, seek a private equity, or go public? Planes explored the options and even negotiated with an American group interested in buying the company. But when he told his father that he had decided Fluidra should go public, he received a response as swift as it was pedagogical: "And who are you to decide that?" The lesson was simple and profound: it's one thing to be a manager and another to be a shareholder. The manager can study the options and offer their opinion. But assets have owners. Fluidra went public in October 2007. And almost immediately the world changed.
When the goals stop going in
Also passionate about football, Planes explains how they experienced the 2008 financial crisis with a sports metaphor: before the crisis, Fluidra was "like Guardiola's Barça, we always scored goals, no matter what we did. Afterwards, the balls started going wide and we didn't score a single one."
2009 was particularly tough. In January of that year, global sales fell by as much as 60%. A company accustomed to growing between 20% and 25% annually went into losses and had to dedicate more than twenty million euros to restructuring. But that same year it generated more cash than ever.
The crisis forced them to look at what they had barely looked at until then: the balance sheet, cash flow, the structure. And it also forced them to change the business. Fluidra lost weight in Southern Europe and gained it in international markets; it moved away from part of its dependence on swimming pool construction and moved closer to the maintenance of the existing park.
Errors also arrived. A bet on diversifying the water business that didn't work and an acquisition in Santander that revealed deficiencies in controls. "Until you screw up, you don't see the wall you had in front of you," says Planes. Perhaps companies, like people, learn mostly when they have no other choice.
Merlin and the future
From those years would also emerge the Merlin plan, one of the metaphors that best explain his way of thinking. The idea is that of King Arthur and his wizard. Merlin takes the king to the future so he can see what Camelot will be like and, from there, understand what he will have had to change to get there.
Planes did the same with Fluïdra: imagine the company a few years ahead and look back to discover what needed to be transformed. "From today and here, it's very difficult to see everything you have to change," he explains. That way of thinking would prepare the ground for an operation that would definitively change Fluïdra's scale: Zodiac.
The leap to the other side of the Atlantic
The United States was the pending subject. It represented approximately half of the world pool market and Fluïdra had a limited presence there. The combination with Zodiac allowed for combining strengths: Fluïdra's international muscle and Zodiac's North American position.
But a merger is not just an operation. It is also a meeting of cultures.
But a merger is not just an operation. It is also a meeting of cultures. Planes explains that, during the process, he carried a small piece of paper behind his phone with eight or nine things that could go wrong. And that one of the most important decisions was to build a leadership tandem with Bruce Brooks: Planes as executive chairman and Brooks as CEO.
Not concentrating everything. Making space for the other
The decision also had a personal dimension. Brooks lived in California and the move to Barcelona involved complex family circumstances. He finally accepted. And the relationship between the two was built on an idea as simple as it was demanding: when they disagreed, each had to assume that the other might be seeing something that he wasn't. This is how the company grew again to the size we know today: a global company listed on the IBEX-35.
People before processes
At the end of the conversation, when asked what he has learned after decades at the helm of Fluïdra, Planes summarizes it in one sentence: “I believe more in people than in processes. It's not that processes don't matter. But behind any structure there are people.” And leadership, for him, also consists of knowing the business, keeping his feet on the ground, and not straying too far from the people who make it possible for the company to advance. He explains it with another image: a group of cyclists pedaling together: “If someone falls behind, maybe we don't need to accelerate more. Maybe we need to go back, pick them up, and continue all together.”
It's not that processes don't matter. But behind any structure there are people
This perspective also explains his way of understanding the second generation of business. The first founder is the one who lights the flame. The second receives a history that is not theirs, but which they will have to make their own. They have to carry the legacy, the expectations, and the “what will people say,” and at the same time find their own path.
Perhaps that is why Planes' trajectory does not end with Fluïdra's numbers. It also involves culture, the Fundació Catalunya Cultura, and another more intimate passion: poetry. He writes, especially, on intercontinental flights. And even, as a good True Leader who is not intimidated by challenges, he dared to read one to the audience filling the auditorium: Badant la vida (Wasting Life), a true declaration of intent.
Being part of someone's life is also a responsibility.
And finally, when asked where he finds the time for everything, a last idea from the personal sphere emerges: “the life team.” The people who accompany us “can multiply us,” he says. But being part of someone's life is also a responsibility.
And perhaps here, between the red R4 of his youth and the great challenges of a multinational, lies the thread that unites the whole story: companies can grow with capital, strategy, and processes. But, in the end, it is people who decide if they want to continue pedaling together.