Last February, the German multinational consumer goods company Henkel announced the sale of the emblematic mop and cloth brand Ballerina to Century Brands. This Barcelona-based company, founded by Andreu Sopena, an executive with a long career in the consumer goods sector, has just formalized the acquisition and is now preparing to launch a plan to reactivate the brand, recover its splendor, and multiply its sales in a segment heavily dominated by private labels.
In addition to Ballerina, Henkel has also recently divested two other very well-known brands, Tenn and Mistol, which have been acquired by the Valencian group Químicas Oro. These divestments are explained by several reasons: these are three brands that are only marketed in the Spanish market, meaning they are not global brands, and furthermore, their sales volume is small in relation to the best-selling brands of the German consumer goods giant, which include Wipp Express, Pritt, Loctite, Bref, Somat, and Schwarzkopf. Henkel also explains that these brands belong to market categories that are not strategic for the company. "Henkel's strategy focuses on strengthening its leadership in those categories where it has leading brands, as well as consolidating its position in growing categories," says the group, whose subsidiary in the Spanish market is located in Barcelona's 22@ district.
The management of Ballerina, therefore, will change companies but not cities, as its new owner, Century Brands, is a small company based on Balmes Street, led by Andreu Sopena, a former executive of large multinationals such as Kraft Foods, Orangina Schweppes, Georgia Pacific Essity (Colhogar), Spotless Group, and Henkel itself. With a 35-year history, Ballerina is a very recognized brand among Spanish customers. The popular yellow cloth was created by the Unilever group in 1986 with a new fabric with superior absorption power to its competitors and became known thanks to original animated television commercials where a mop and a cloth with a woman's face were seen dancing while doing household chores.
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Unilever divested the Ballerina brand in 2008, even though at that time it was the second best-selling brand in the sector, behind Vileda, with a market share of 23.5% and sales exceeding twelve million units per year. The buyer at that time was the Spotless group, to whom it had previously also sold the Vim brand. This French company specialized in buying cleaning product brands that did not fit within the large consumer multinational corporations, either because they were secondary brands or operated in small markets. In addition to Vim and Ballerina, and thanks to financial resources provided by investment funds such as AXA and BC Partners, Spotless grew throughout Europe with the acquisition of many other brands such as Bloom and Cucal, until Henkel bought 100% of the company in 2014 for 940 million euros.
Therefore, Ballerina passed into Henkel's hands with the acquisition of Spotless and now leaves the group to integrate into a company that also specializes in operating in those market categories that are not strategic for large multinationals, niche businesses where local brands have a significant weight. In this sense, Century Brands operates in very specific segments, such as firelighters, with the Magic brand; metal polishes, with the Stark product range; pipe uncloggers (RAK); repairing hand creams (Famos); ecological cleaning products (Casa Verde); or talcum powders (Calber).
Heir to Nubiola's consumer goods division
Founded six years ago, Century Brands also owns the Nogat (rodenticides), Blancotex (washing additives), Bonodor (moth repellents), and Clair Matin (cologne) brands. In addition, the company has the exclusive distribution for Spain of the O'Cedar (wood care) and Close-up toothpaste brands. Most of the brands owned by Century Brands belonged to the former Catalan family business PGC Nubiola and were acquired by Sopena within the framework of a creditors' meeting and liquidation of the company.
"They were brands that were very deteriorated and that I recovered; during these six years we have managed to turn them around and today they are present in all supermarket and hypermarket chains, with the exception of Mercadona, Lidl, and Aldi," explains the founder of Century Brands to The New Barcelona Post.
According to the businessman, Ballerina now becomes the company's largest brand, which, with this acquisition, will have a turnover of 5 million euros, a figure that he expects to grow strongly in the coming years. "Ballerina was a very small brand for Henkel, but now we are going to revitalize it, we want to give it a new life because it has a lot of potential in a market where it has high notoriety," Sopena highlights.
With a staff of fifteen people, in addition to the offices in Barcelona, Century Brands has a small factory in Lladó, near Figueres (Girona). The executive announces the company's intention to continue growing with the incorporation of new brands that may cease to be strategic for the large multinationals that dominate the drugstore market. "We want to bet on niche markets where we can offer differentiation to the consumer, which are small for large groups and where, in addition, there is little competition from white label brands," he points out.
"Ballerina was a very small brand for Henkel, but now we are going to revitalize it, we want to give it a new life because it has a lot of potential in a market where it has high notoriety"Sopena highlights that Century Brands is the second main company in the metal polishing sector thanks to the Stark brand and that it is also a benchmark in repairing hand creams with Famos. Another characteristic of the company's brand portfolio is that they are very old brands, in some cases centuries old, as is the case with Calber talcum powder, born in San Sebastián in 1900. Another example is the Blancotex product line, heirs of Azul Montserrat, an innovative whitening product launched by Nubiola in 1914 that contained an optical brightener or blue pigment manufactured in Barcelona. For its part, Famos glycerin cream was developed in the 1920s by the former Unitex Laboratories. The fresh Clair Matin cologne also became very famous in the 70s thanks to the music of its popular television commercial.