Rosa Tous: "It's a lot of responsibility for your surname to be a brand"

A 105-year-old company that bills over 500 million, has a commercial presence worldwide, and remains in the hands of the family that gives the brand its name. Although perhaps now we could say that the family bears the brand's name. TOUS is undoubtedly a success story in the landscape of family businesses in general, and of Catalan family businesses in particular. But it is not talked about much, or it is said in hushed tones, because here we are not very proud of others' successes. Although the Tous are almost like family, we have seen them grow, enjoy, and suffer, and we have bought and criticized the little bear in equal measure.

"Being from Manresa has given us a lot of humility," says Rosa Tous before more than fifty people from the business world gathered by EY in Barcelona in a new session of the True Leaders cycle organized with The New Barcelona Post. Rosa Tous, the eldest daughter of Salvador Tous and Rosa Oriol, the eldest sister of Alba, Laura, and Marta, is the Corporate Vice President and Reach & Relevance Officer of the company, and she is surely also its most authentic ambassador. And since this week, Rosa is also the president of the Catalan Association of Family Business. She is kind and approachable as she was 25 years ago, when the brand was beginning to stand out, or almost 40 years ago, when she trained in gemology and set up the company's first marketing department.

Rosa's simplicity and tone do not diminish the group's ambition: "TOUS wants to become the most successful, desired, and committed affordable luxury jewelry brand in the world." From Manresa, why not? TOUS now bills 523 million euros (in 2024) and has more than 4,000 employees; it manages a network of more than 600 stores ---own and franchises---, and has a direct presence in 40 markets. "We still have a lot of work to do, but this objective, this vision, helps us not to lose our way, to be clear about where we want to go. Furthermore, we review it many times among my sisters. It is important to be clear about this direction, and to think that everything you are doing is to build and get there." And they are clear that they want "to continue being close and having their feet on the ground, and to take into account the world we live in, the city we are in, and for whom we are working." Over the years they have worked on the company's values and those of the family, and Rosa highlights one above all: naturalness.

It was in the mid-90s when the Tous family thought they could go beyond the jewelry store of their grandparents in Manresa, and the ones their parents had opened first in Lleida and then in Barcelona. "We thought we had a business on our hands that we could really work as a brand. We had started to put other products in our portfolio, not just jewelry, but also handbags and other items." And one thing leads to another: "Creating something big was not just about opening four stores for the daughters, but it was really about growing and expanding with what we knew how to do, which in the end was knowing how to make jewelry and knowing how to make stores. With these two premises, the foundations of what we are today were laid."

This business ambition has been built on the family name. "It implies a lot of responsibility. In everything you do, because you don't realize it but what you are doing as a person, as an individual, even on an intimate level, also represents what your brand is," explains Rosa Tous. "We have done a lot of internal work with consultants throughout our history and we have the three hats very clear: the role of family, that of owner, and that of executive, but people, on the street, customers, do not always differentiate them."

The Tous women are executives and owners, but also daughters and sisters. "Our parents have been the engine of what TOUS is today: our father is the head, and our mother, the heart. She, with an overflowing vision and creativity, and he has known how to put it in its place. We are following that legacy and growing this shared vision. We have created a space that we always call the 'I' of the four. Although we all have our way of seeing or our personality, or our objectives, there is always a point where there is a common denominator, and that is what we work for. We know that we are obliged to understand each other, we must make this effort to build the future of what is ours, because we are turning one hundred years old but we want to be here for one hundred more years."

Sharing and learning are two concepts that often resonate in conversation with Rosa Tous. "You learn to be an entrepreneur by making your own way... We have been training ourselves as we have needed to: with seminars, at IESE, with consultants, talking to other entrepreneurs, seeing how other brands did it. And you learn by doing, making mistakes, rectifying, growing. From my mother I learned to be very curious. You should never lose this curiosity, you never know enough and there is always capacity to learn."

"The bear is what it is because we have grown, and it has become universal because we have wanted to be global"

TOUS is a jewelry and lifestyle brand, which began diversification more than thirty years ago. First with handbags, glasses, watches, scarves, baby clothes, fragrances. They have even made skis, and even a lamp. "We have decided to focus on what we have, without ceasing to innovate."

And in the brand's journey, the bear has been omnipresent: "The bear was born in 1985 as part of a collection designed by my mother, inspired by some stuffed animals she had seen in Italy. She went to the workshop and said: 'I want a very simple bear, that we can cut from a gold sheet, very easy, and it has to be very naïf, I want to make a bear, an elephant, a boy or a girl.' I am convinced that the bear is what it is because we have grown, and it has become universal because we have wanted to be global." But coinciding with the centenary in 2020, "we did an important brand review and decided that we would remove it from all the graphic part. The bear was everywhere, and it should remain as what it is, a jewel. We want to protect it."

"A good partner asks you the uncomfortable questions that have helped us move forward"

The Tous have also been brave in managing the ownership structure: in 2015 the family brought in a private equity fund, Partners Group, and at the end of 2024 they repurchased their stake. "It was a time when we had already made the transfer of what family businesses don't like to be said much, of professionalizing ourselves, by putting a CEO who was not a family member." She adds that "then it was evaluated whether any of the sisters could assume that role, and we thought it didn't make much sense. We were making the handover; I explain it as if it were very easy, and it wasn't that easy either." Having a CEO "was very good for learning and also for obtaining more rigor in the way of working. But the family still had all the weight as owners and we had to share this responsibility. We can say that we made a very good choice. Partners have been extraordinary partners, we have learned a lot and grown a lot with them, they have asked us the uncomfortable questions that have helped us move forward, and that is what we expected." In these almost ten years, TOUS has doubled its global sales volume.

But like all these financial operations, it had an expiration date: "We have had many meetings with my sisters, and also with my parents. And we decided that the best thing at the moment we were in and where we were was to recover 100%. We have made a significant effort." Rosa Tous explains that, as a family business, they maintain "a very long-term vision, the care of the legacy, the care of the territory, of the communities, of our people. But I don't know what will happen in the future, we are open to different options, and at the moment we are in and where we were, I think it has been the best option we could make. First, to avoid making hasty decisions. Now we are calm and very focused on the business."

The next generation consists of ten cousins. "Among all of us, we work to take care of them and make them responsible shareholders who take care of the company." And they also do it by example: "Seeing us enjoy ourselves. If you come home every day fed up and tired of working, your children won't like to work. But I, who love what I do so much, have always conveyed to them that it is something very good."

The world changes fast and, to keep growing, "we have to be constantly vigilant, seeing what happens in the environment; the sociopolitics that at a given moment you would say don't impact you, but of course what Trump is doing now impacts us. We have to be flexible to react when necessary, and we have to think about future generations: we want to keep doing beautiful things that young people like."

"The strongest competition we have is experience: going out to dinner or traveling instead of buying a piece of jewelry"

Most TOUS stores in the world are in main streets and shopping centers and have as neighbors brands that could be considered competitors. "We all see each other and we all know each other, but we have always thought that we should go our own way, with our own vision, and especially lately we are realizing that the most important competition we have is experience. Instead of buying a piece of jewelry, one can choose to go out to dinner or for a weekend trip: so what needs to be done is to seek sensitivity, touch the heart. That's why we learn to make things happen in our stores, experiences with our customers."

Within the brand building strategy thinking about legacy, Rosa highlights two initiatives they have launched: the Jewelry School, since 2019, to train and transmit the craft in countries with a greater presence of the brand. And now, the TOUS chair at Elisava to explore branding and creativity from a transversal perspective connected to future challenges.

The way Rosa Tous talks about values and growth and projects makes sense when she explains the importance of corporate culture, which is nothing more than "the way we behave and where we want to go, and what we are and what we can offer to society. We do many exercises to try to transmit our values, our purpose. We do communication rollouts, communication is very important in everything we do. But culture is the way you move within the company, many times even without thinking much about it, but just with this behavior people perceive what is happening." And she summarizes it with the three C's: consistency, coherence, and consequence. "You have to be very consistent when you want to try to transmit your values, your culture. In addition to how you are and how you behave, you must have a plan. It's okay to be very repetitive, you must be coherent with your principles, and you must be very consequent with what it implies."