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Journey to the origins of Desigual

More than 25 years have passed since Thomas Meyer made a jacket with remnants of used jeans. The Swiss businessman at the time had no idea that this original piece was the germ of Desigual, a company that will close 2010 with a turnover of 450 million euros and more than two hundred stores and franchises with a single brand.

Desigual, the latest phenomenon in Spanish fashion, began its journey in 1983, when Meyer created the first piece of clothing in his empire of fun clothes. A year later, the Swiss looked for a brand to stamp on his clothes. Desigual was born from an idea by filmmaker Isabel Coixet, which came with the motto 'it is not the same'.

After presenting its first collection, the brand opened its first point of sale, located in Ibiza. In 1986, the year the establishment opened its doors, the Desigual team was composed of forty people. Today, the company has about 2,000 workers and is preparing to install a new headquarters in Barcelona to respond to its development.

But not all were successes in the company's origins. Rapid growth caught the company off guard, which in 1988 was forced to ask for suspension of payments, the current bankruptcy. Meyer then made the first important decision in the history of Desigual: to continue with the brand.

With the Feel you sexy collection, launched in 1991, Meyer's first prints saw the light, which became the most characteristic sign of Desigual. With this charge, the commercial and financial restructuring of the company began.

The second key moment for Desigual happened in 1992. Meyer met Manel Adell, former manager of companies like Agrolimen, Bang & Olufsen and Schweppes. The two crossed the Atlantic on a sailboat, along with eleven others. Ten years later, Adell would join the company to lead growth.

In the mid-nineties, the company made the leap to the foreign market, with its first sales to France and Portugal and opened its first own stores, in Salou, Lloret de Mar and Platja d'Aro, three Catalan municipalities linked to tourism. Currently, Desigual is present with its own establishments in cities such as Berlin, London and New York and exports already account for more than 50% of its sales.

Despite being a chain, Desigual also used the catwalk as a marketing tool in its origins. In 1997, the brand paraded again on Gaudí's extinct catwalk in Barcelona.

Later, in 2003, Desigual started to develop innovative advertising actions, such as Paint-parties (parties where the customers decorate the stores themselves), Kiss Tours (kisses in the middle of the street) or Naked, that is, customers enter the shops naked and skirt dressed.

The incorporation of Manel Adell into the company was a real shock. Adell began his collaboration as a consultant and then as a partner and CEO. In addition to promoting development in Spain (in 2005 alone, 24 stores were opened in the country), Desigual opened its first store abroad in 2006, located in Singapore.

In the past three years, Desigual has established itself as a true phenomenon in fashion distribution. Stores in the United States, a corporate headquarters at the foot of the luxurious Hotel Vela and an online distribution platform that will serve the entire world. The next step? Landing in China, but in 2012.