Hawkers sold its first sunglasses in 2013 from Elche, an industrial city in Spain’s Alicante province, and for years almost none of them were made there. Its frames came out of six factories in China in 2015 and moved through logistics hubs in Madrid, Los Angeles, Mexico and Sydney.
Alejandro Betancourt López became Hawkers’ president in November 2016. Under his chairmanship, the company has moved the bulk of that work onto injection machines it owns in Elche, a few years after deciding that local production could match Asian prices.
From Contract Factories to an Elche Floor
Production started in February 2021 with 30 jobs, 10 per shift, and four injection machines, three rated at 100 tons and one at 50. Each injection cycle takes about 50 seconds, and roughly six operators fit lenses by hand. Hawkers‘ 2022 plan called for 3.3 million pairs sold worldwide, with 1.9 million of them made in Elche.
Around 70,000 frames a month were coming off the line by September 2021, and the company passed 600 employees for the first time. Its first locally made collection, Raw, covered the One, One LS and Warwick models and sold at the same price as the imported lines.
At the plant, photo-incision, electro-corrosion, super-polishing and laser work replaced aerosol lacquering, and the frames carry Eastman’s international seal for polyamides. Claudio Scagni, technical director of the factory project, said the company wanted to bet on local production and draw on the know-how of a city with an industrial tradition.
Capacity reached 120,000 pairs a month by May 2024. Three shifts were producing 80,000 to 100,000 units, and designers were releasing about 225 new models a year.
What the Factory Changes for Alejandro Betancourt López’s Brand
Cheap social media advertising built the first version of Hawkers, and once rival labels copied the formula, ad prices climbed and the platforms kept a growing share of each sale. “The margins are shifted in the chain of value, to somewhere else,” Alejandro Betancourt said in an interview. Bringing production in-house moves part of that margin back to the company, because a frame’s cost no longer includes an outside manufacturer’s markup or a long ocean crossing.
Alicante Plaza reported in 2021 that frames leaving the plant match the designer’s original sketch, a level of control the company lacked with contract suppliers. Pedro Beneyto, who became chief executive in October 2022 under Alejandro Betancourt López’s chairmanship, said in early 2024 that Hawkers concentrates most of its manufacturing in Elche.
Lenses were still arriving from Asia when the factory opened, and the company said it planned to bring that step closer over time. Hawkers also keeps 25 staff in Madrid and 14 in Barcelona, while about 120 office workers sit upstairs from the production floor that Alejandro Betancourt López’s group now runs.