In terms of growth measured by shareholder returns, few executives surpass the record of Manel Adell. As CEO of Desigual between 2002 and 2012 he oversaw a transformation from a small Spanish fashion outlet, with 50 employees and a turnover of around €10 million, into a global business and iconic brand, with revenues topping €1 billion and 5,000 staff.
Yet Manel is not someone who focuses primarily on bottom-line returns. A lover of nature, he is committed to a rewilding project on the north coast of the Balearic island of Menorca, where he owns a tract of land of around 1,000 hectares. To qualify as an entrepreneur for his Decelera startup club, also based in Menorca, your enterprise has to be committed to one of the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
“It was the single year that changed my life the most – apart from becoming a father.”
The culture at Desigual was to combine fun and profit. “We were selling happiness, not clothes.” He describes the importance of a culture of creativity that runs throughout the business – not confined to design or research and development. Creativity involves continual experimentation, iteration and discovery. It requires implementation and testing in the real world. Desigual was “an amazing exercise of inspiring and unleashing imagination and creativity of everybody involved in the project”.
The immediate trigger for taking on a CEO role at the then young company Desigual, being rewarded in part by equity, was a trip to Silicon Valley in 2000, which encouraged a move from corporate career to a more entrepreneurial role. The earlier foundation was his year at IMD, six
years before. This was an experience he describes as life-changing:
“It was full of challenges, but also full of amazing experiences and good friendships. It was the single year that has changed my life the most I would say – apart from when I became a father.”
He valued the equally strong blend of technical knowledge, such as financial analysis and strategy; and personal development – emotional intelligence and the ability to work in teams, capacities which become more important the more senior you become.
A vivid memory is a lesson that combined elements of both: the accounting principle of the sunk cost, and the cognitive biases that underpin it. He recalls Professor Werner Ketelhöhn hosting the discussion on a case study concerning a railway wagon for which there was no market demand. Ideas flowed around repurposing the wagon as an office, or for some other contrived function, and the professor had to raise his voice to declare that the core learning was that sometimes an investment will have no return. You have to move on. Everyone in the class remembers the wagon.
The diverse faculty and cohort at IMD accelerated Manel’s ability to work globally. The International Consulting Project involved advising designers from the Art Center College, Pasadena USA, in their campus in Vevey Switzerland, about working in Europe. The Americans had arrived with a rather naïve idea that Europe constituted a single culture, and were insufficiently prepared for the high degree of linguistic, legislative and cultural differences in a small continent.
Before attending IMD he had been working in Spain for the UK-based food and beverages giant Cadbury-Schweppes. After graduating, he was more qualified to work internationally, and was hired by Bang & Olufsen, the upmarket hi-fi specialist. Initially he was based in Denmark, later in Brussels. As he was helping the firm expand outside of Europe, he was “living in a plane for quite a lot of the time.” The combination of Spanish flair and Danish rigor proved to be a highly effective combination.
All this experience set him up perfectly for the international expansion at Desigual in the early 2000s. He recruited diverse talent, rising to a total of 50 nationalities at the Barcelona headquarters. They expanded rapidly, but effectively, beginning in France and eventually to 50-plus countries in all continents.
As a shareholder in Desigual from a time when it was a small operation, he gained his financial returns after a decade of spectacular growth and reinvestment. In common with many entrepreneurial individuals, he has sought fresh challenges. He has served as a nonexecutive director, including at fashion and fragrance group Puig, Mango and at Amer Sports Corporation among others.
He set up a family office and became an investor, starting the Decelera program in 2016, which has already produced some high-growth startups, despite the in-person training programs having to be suspended for two years owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. The vision is to have a Decelera program in every continent, nurturing a global club of purpose-driven entrepreneurs, dedicated to creating a better world.
Risk, creativity and adventure have marked his career. As he said in his speech at the graduation ceremony for the MBA in 2019: “Never think that the good path is the easiest or the safest. Most of the things that are worthwhile in life produce a certain vertigo … I encourage you to jump. Be brave.”
