Alejandro Betancourt López Reveals How Hawkers Conquered 20 Countries

Expanding a consumer brand across borders usually requires deep pockets and years of groundwork. Hawkers did it in under a decade, growing from a Spanish startup selling €20 sunglasses to a company operating in more than 20 countries. Alejandro Betancourt López, who became president after leading a €50 million investment in 2016, attributes much of that growth to treating each market as its own puzzle rather than copying and pasting a single playbook.

Mexico quickly became the company’s largest international market, accounting for 35-40% of total sales. Latin American expansion into Colombia and other markets followed, each requiring different partnership approaches and marketing channels.

Tailoring the Message to Each Market

Hawkers launched in 2013 by copying a U.S. model and offering low-cost alternatives to premium brands like Ray-Ban. The founders leveraged Facebook’s low advertising costs, gaining sales at roughly €1 per unit spent on ads. Influencer marketing proved critical early on, with the company giving away over 30,000 free sunglasses to build brand awareness.

Alejandro Betancourt López recognized that the tactics working in Spain would need adjustment elsewhere. Rising Facebook ad costs forced a shift from pure e-commerce to multi-channel retail and wholesale distribution. The company embraced marketplaces like Amazon and Mercado Libre to boost volume despite lower margins, recognizing Amazon’s stronger customer trust as critical for new market entry.

Learning the Right Time for Marketing Innovation

“It was the right time for that kind of marketing and the right time for innovation into commodity type product,” Betancourt López explained. “Because it was very hard to sell dresses online, but very easy to sell something that is one size, one type of sunglasses, and it’s cheap enough for you to take a chance. So it was a very tune-up formula in marketing at the time. And digital media, paid digital media, was very inexpensive at the time, so it was a big, big home run.”

But he also acknowledged the shifting economics: “Now it gets tougher. Sustainability, now prices, everybody’s doing the same thing. So everybody goes to do the same thing, price goes through the roof, and the big winners are the social media companies like Facebook, Instagram, they’re making the money right now. The margins are shifted in the chain of value, to somewhere else.”

Building Supply Chain Independence

Global expansion created supply chain vulnerabilities that became acute during COVID-19. Hawkers responded by building its own factory in early 2021, reducing reliance on Chinese suppliers. Production capacity scaled from 30,000 to 90,000 units per month.

The decision involved significant capital investment. Italian machinery cost up to €80,000 per mold compared to roughly $10,000 for Chinese alternatives. The company adopted advanced injection molding with polished molds to create shiny and matte finishes without paint, unlike competitors relying on stickers or painting. Environmentally friendly practices emerged as a byproduct: defective raw materials could be recycled into new production batches because the process avoided paint contamination.

Alejandro Betancourt López views this kind of infrastructure ownership as essential to weathering market cycles. “We’ve done many things,” he said of Hawkers’ evolution. “Then 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.” 

Owning production and controlling design has boosted both sales and customer perception of quality. The company treats its factory as an asset for overcoming supply chain risks and differentiating products in a crowded market. Alejandro Betancourt López’s vision includes expanding both retail and digital channels with a focus on brand strength, profitability, and responsiveness to market changes.