MILAN — Ecoalf is seasoning its commitment to sustainability with a pinch of salt. Quite literally.
The Spanish brand rooted in making sustainable fashion appealing and accessible has debuted its second unit in Barcelona on La Rambla, the city’s famed boulevard, opening a 3,229-square-foot space largely decked in salt.
In keeping with its innovative and eco-minded bent, Ecoalf developed construction-ready textiles to cover about 60 percent of the boutique, including 16-foot-tall arches. The process required several months for completion.
The idea was in fact triggered two years ago by a similar project titled “La Sal,” a temporary pavilion by architects José Rodríguez and Carlos Montes installed in San Fernando, Cádiz as part of Spain’s TAC! Urban Architecture Festival, a public program leveraging architecture to activate public spaces and encourage conversations on sustainability and culture in the cities.
The salt store is intended to celebrate the ocean and Ecoalf added seagulls crafted from palm trees and organic materials such as wood paneling and displays and organic-looking flooring, the latter made from a B Corp-certified recycled plastic.
“For us, every store needs to boast a dedicated storytelling and has to have something to do with the city,” said Ecoalf’s founder and president Javier Goyeneche.
He mentioned, for example, the fishermen theme for the Valencia unit and the use of cardboard for the flagship in San Sebastián. A boutique in La Coruña, which is to bow by the end of November, will hinge on shellfish, followed by another unit in Palma de Mallorca to open next spring.
Retail has been a key priority for the brand in recent years.
“It is getting more and more important…and it is doing really well [partly] because right now we have a much more balanced product category strategy. At the beginning, we were much more dependent on outerwear, which used to represent 76 percent of the sales, while right now it accounts for 41 percent. That’s good because footfall is much more balanced throughout the year,” Goyeneche said.
The perks of retail are not just profitability and margins, the president said.
“Retail is very important because we control the narrative….We don’t like doing promotions, we don’t do Black Friday — in fact, we create campaigns against Black Friday — and with wholesale you lose control over that. Also, we’re now able to tell the story of how we make things and why we feel that we do things in a different way,” he explained.
Boasting about 24 flagships across countries, Ecoalf generates about 30 percent of its revenues from retail and 24 percent from e-commerce. The remainder is still wholesale driven.
In 2025 the company logged sales of 64.8 million euros, up 13 percent versus 2024. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization stood at 5.6 million euros, or 9 percent of revenues.
A healthy and profitable business has allowed the Spanish sustainable pioneer to make investments in its eco-minded business model.
Last year the company introduced the double-accountability methodology, reporting for the first time an Impact P&L, developed by leading impact-measurement institutions within the Capitals Coalition, including Harvard Business School’s Impact-Weighted Accounts Initiative, or IWAI.
The premise for it, Goyeneche said, was to verify if growth was sustainable when looked through an ESG perspective.
The turnout was positive. Assessing its operations, Ecoalf discovered that it generated 0.02 euros in net positive impact for society and the planet for every euro in revenue, while the equivalent industry benchmark generated a negative impact of 0.06 euros, preliminary results showed.
“We had the impression that we were probably going to have a better outcome than the average of the [apparel] industry, but we were not sure if it was going to be positive…so it essentially proves that the more we grow, the more positive impact we can create,” Goyeneche said.
“It was a very interesting exercise to be done because all the teams were involved, from the sustainability to the financial departments and operations,” he said, highlighting how the results have also lifted the company culture and instilled a sense of pride among employees.
The executive is aware that no sustainability can ever be achieved without a healthy business, but his primary goal since founding the brand in 2009 is to combine both.
“The traditional P&L is also absolutely very important because if you don’t have a profitable company, you won’t survive and you won’t be sustainable…but it’s not enough to be profitable. It’s very important to measure who you are profitable against. Against the planet? Against the rest of the people? Profitability by itself I don’t think is enough anymore,” he said.
As the company targets long-term growth, Goyeneche forecast 2026 sales to jump 20 percent to about 80 million euros, with a 10 to 11 percent EBITDA margin and 3 million euros in profits.
Regions of expansion include the DACH area, France and the U.K., as well as Scandinavia.
“At the same time, our goal for next year is the U.S. This is something which we have very clear. Judging by the [American] customers that get in our stores, we feel that they love the brand, the design, and the story,” Goyeneche said, adding that the country was the third largest driver of Ecoalf’s e-commerce until tariffs were put in place.