AFP – Spanish fashion retailer Mango, founded 40 years ago in Barcelona, is ramping its global expansion despite economic uncertainties that have shaken some other global mass-market apparel giants.
They include a 400-square-metre space in Los Angeles, a similar-sized one in Manchester, England, and a flagship store in India’s tech hub of Bengaluru.
Mango has opened a total of 115 stores over the past year, mainly in the United States where its sales outlets have tripled, the company’s global retail director, Cesar de Vicente, said in an interview with AFP.
It has more than 2,700 stores in over 115 countries, compared to nearly 6,000 worldwide for Zara-owner Inditex, Spain’s other clothing retail success story.
The expansion has helped boost turnover with Mango expecting to post over EUR3 billion (USD3.3 billion) in sales in 2023 – a record – when it announces its yearly results last Monday, De Vicente told AFP as he stood in front of prototypes of new garments at the company’s sprawling headquarters in a Barcelona suburb.
It is at this building – dubbed the “campus” – that the textile group which employs 500 stylists designs and tests its future collections.
The company sells nearly 160 million items of clothing and accessories a year.
Mango traces its origins to 1984 when a young man of Turkish origin, Isak Andic, opened his first shop on the Paseo de Gracia, Barcelona’s famous shopping street, with the help of his older brother Nahman which was hugely succesful.
Spain had just emerged from a decades-long dictatorship which ended with the death of General Francisco Franco in 1975 and consumers were hungry for more modern clothes.
“He saw that we needed colour, style,” said De Vicente.
Andic quickly opened dozens of more stores in Spain and then abroad, starting in neighbouring Portugal and France, all under the name Mango.
