One channel built Hawkers, and one channel nearly sank it. The Spanish sunglasses brand had wired its entire business to Facebook advertising, and that bet curdled the moment ad prices climbed and returns thinned out.
Alejandro Betancourt López, who took over as president in late 2016, spent much of the turnaround weaning the company off that single dependency and spreading its risk across several channels. The rebuild leaned on retail as much as digital.
When Facebook Stopped Being Cheap
Early on, Facebook ads cost almost nothing and Hawkers grew faster than it could ship product. Then the price of those ads spiked, and the return on each euro spent fell sharply and took the company’s original edge with it.
Spain’s wider economy piled on. Consumer spending tightened, rivals leaned harder on promotions, and Hawkers found itself discounting aggressively just to hold market share. The cheap-traffic advantage that had powered the early years was gone for good.
Influencers, Stores, Marketplaces
So the company spread its bets. It moved into influencer partnerships, and between 2016 and 2018 it opened more than 80 physical stores across Spain and Portugal, and it weighed profitability against the plain value of being seen on a high street. Stores did more than sell; they reassured shoppers that an online-first brand was real and here to stay.
It also embraced Amazon and Mercado Libre despite the thinner margins on those platforms. The reasoning was practical: marketplace shoppers trusted established sites more than an unfamiliar brand, and the sheer volume could offset a smaller cut on each pair sold. Volume, not margin, was the point on those channels.
Many Streams, Not One
“We’ve done many things. We have done all kinds of things,” Betancourt López said of the shift. “We moved to influencers, then we moved to the retail space, and now it’s a robust company that doesn’t depend on one main stream of revenue.”
“So we have different mainstreams, different strategies at the same time, and it’s more sustainable,” he added. A brand that once lived or died by a single ad platform now stands on several legs, which is precisely what let it absorb the next shock when it came. Through the whole rebuild he refused to win on price alone; during downturns fashion companies often sacrifice margins to hold market share, yet he pushed the team toward value rather than a price war, on the bet that a stronger brand would outlast a cheaper one.
