Jesús Alonso Fernández, founder of Jealsa Rianxeira, gained the complicity of the store boys from El Corte Inglés and the now-defunct Galerías Preciados by putting cans of tuna from his cannery into the boxes with the knitwear made in Jealfer, the other leg of the company business. They were the most anticipated shipments and the clothes that used to enter the point of sale. His son and current president of the group, Jesús Alonso Escurís, admitted in an interview published by FARO, from the Prensa Ibérica group, at the end of 2019 that he came to ask his father about closing the textile factory, a constant hole in red numbers in the years of the relocation of the sector in Galicia and the mass entry of production from China. “He looked at me and said: as long as I live, this won’t end. So I got out of there and told my brothers: we have a problem”, he recalled. They put Jealfer in the hands of a former bank manager with knowledge of the sector and gave him a period of six months to have solid arguments to lower the blind or continue.
A long decade later, Jealfer manages three popular brands –Viriato, Pertegaz and Jorge Vázquez– present in 10 markets with almost 300 points of sale. Its company philosophy encompasses “artisan quality, own production and sustainability”. At the head is Silvia Alonso, banner of the third generation in the family. “We have our own knitting industry in Boiro, which gives us a fundamental advantage since knitting is very technical work.and we also have some nearby collaborating workshops”, he pointed out in February, coinciding with the premiere at Fashion Week in Madrid of Viriato, the mythical banner of the Galicia Moda phenomenon of the 80s that Jealfer rescued from liquidation in 2017. “It is an important step on her path to success –Silvia Alonso highlighted– and an opportunity to show her creativity and her commitment to high-quality slow fashion made in Spain”.
“Having our own knitwear industry here is a fundamental advantage”
CEO of JEALFER
In the report for the 2021 financial year, Adriana Domínguez claimed the company set up by her father as “activists of the eternal” in the letter to investors. “If we have learned anything in this pandemic period, it is that a process of deep transformation of the company can be followed and even accelerated. And that’s what we’ve done,” he details. After many years producing in other geographical areas, we have made the decision to do nearshoring. We are attracting nearby productions, which allows us to further accelerate our commitment to sustainability, doubling our certifications in raw materials with all our suppliers”.
Since he took the helm, first as CEO and in May 2020 as president, Adolfo Domínguez has recovered his primitive DNA and is immersed in a positive impact plan that goes beyond collections. The stores, for example, are renewed “with criteria of craftsmanship and zero kilometer” and in clothing they prioritize the use of fibers from sustainable forests. “Everyone knows that this brand has been defending what used to be called ecology for many years,” he commented in an interview with FARO. Her defense of another fashion industry has led to her election as president of the new Textile Sector Observatory.
In her letter also in the Inditex annual report, the first with her as leader, Marta Ortega launched an authentic declaration of intent about the future of the giant that billed 33,569 million euros in 2022: “We do not want to be fast but agile and flexible; We don’t want to be big, but relevant. We want to be agents of change and we aspire to lead the transformation of our industry, for our impact to be positive in all areas”. The new president of holding what did he do with just in time in the supply, a model admired throughout the world went even one step further in an interview published by the Financial Times this week. “We don’t recognize ourselves in what they call fast fashion,” she rejected, because the accumulation of stock – in his case, less than 2% – and poor quality clothing at low prices “cannot be further from what we do”.
“We don’t want to be big, but relevant”
President of Inditex
His arrival at the top of the board strengthened Inditex’s evident strategy for a brand image and a more premium. Like a huge boutique, opening up to collaborations with other companies, young design talents and the most in-demand artistic creators at the moment. It is the obsession confessed by Ortega herself: the product and “quality, quality and quality”.
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