Spain Clothing Industry

Time to learn about the fashion industry in Spain. If you know of other clothing factories or fashion companies from Spain that are not listed on this page, please let us know — we would like to add them to this page.

Fashion Industry Overview

Spain is one of the few countries where a single retail group reshaped how the whole world buys clothes. Inditex, listed below as a retailer with five fashion chains — Zara, Pull and Bear, Massimo Dutti, Bershka and Stradivarius — is headquartered in Arteixo, in Galicia in northwestern Spain, and Zara grew from a Spanish clothing business into the best-known name in fast fashion: design, manufacturing, distribution and retail run as one fast-moving system, so new styles reach stores quickly and in limited runs. Barcelona contributes a second global name: Mango, founded in Barcelona in 1984, built its own international high-street business from Catalonia. Together, the Galician and Catalan groups made Spain a centre of modern clothing retail as well as of making.

The directory below shows the industry underneath those retail names, and it is notably complete as a supply chain. A Barcelona-area mill spins open-end yarns; a Valencian-area producer makes industrial sewing threads; a Barcelona company manufactures interlinings, the hidden materials that give garments their shape; another wholesales elastic fabrics; a Vic tannery finishes sheepskins; a Barcelona-founded firm makes buttons and trimmings; Catalan machinery builders supply warpers, knitting machines and winders, alongside dealers in second-hand weaving and footwear machinery; a textile recycling firm trades fibre waste back into spinning and nonwovens; and a specialist factory makes children's shoes. Madrid nightwear, Canary Islands retail, a Valencia import/export house and the Spanish government's own fashion trade promotion office in New York complete the picture. Spain's industry is not one cluster doing one thing — it is a full chain, from fibre and yarn to the shop floor.

Fashion Cities & Regions

Madrid is the capital and one of the country's two fashion centres. Madrid Fashion Week is the capital's showcase for Spanish designers, linked at the top of this page, and the listings place trade and making in the capital as well: Bella Di Notte produces handmade nightwear from its Madrid address, with finishes carried out by hand. Government promotion also runs through Madrid's institutions, represented in this directory by Fashion From Spain, the Trade Commission office that promotes Spanish fashion companies in the United States from New York.

Barcelona and the surrounding Catalan towns form the second centre, and in this directory the densest one. Calada spins yarns at Santa Eugenia de Berga in the province of Barcelona; Edipec wholesales elastic fabrics from the city itself; Flex Internacional manufactures interlinings on Ronda San Pedro in Barcelona; Vilaregut, founded in Barcelona in 1957, makes buttons and trimmings from Castellar del Valles; NOETEX deals in second-hand textile machinery from Santa Perpetua de Mogoda; and the Rius machinery group is Catalan as well. Vic, inland from Barcelona, is the leather town in these listings: Genis Antel has tanned sheepskins there since 1880. Catalonia's role is the industrial backbone — yarns, fabrics, components and machinery — behind the designer names.

The other regions each carry a specialism. Galicia, in the northwest, is Inditex country: the group's headquarters at Arteixo, near A Coruna, anchors design, logistics and retail management there. The Valencian Community, on the Mediterranean coast, appears repeatedly in the supply listings: consortium 2000 trades from Valencia city, which also hosts Valencia Fashion Week; Inretex recycles textile raw materials from Bocairent; Hicoman produces sewing threads from the N-340 corridor; and Vifama builds and rebuilds footwear machinery near Novelda, in a province long associated with shoe making. The Canary Islands appear at the retail end, where Goodsworth runs a specialist outlet in Puerto Rico, Gran Canaria, inviting offers from wholesalers in the USA and UK.

Key Industry Sectors

Retail and fast fashion are Spain's most visible sector, and the Inditex listing is its centrepiece: five chains spanning Zara's broad fashion offer, Pull and Bear and Bershka for younger customers, Massimo Dutti at the more tailored end, and Stradivarius. Mango's Barcelona-based business belongs to the same sector, and at the specialist end Goodsworth retails dresses, tops, blouses, skirts and pants for summer and eveningwear, while Fashionable Swimwear Online imports and distributes Colombian swimwear designer labels into Spain and the Netherlands.

Textiles and components form the second sector, and it is unusually deep in these listings. Calada manufactures and exports open-end yarns from synthetic and artificial fibres, cotton and its mixtures. Hicoman is a vertical producer of industrial sewing threads in nylon 6.6 and polyester continuous filament, mainly for the shoe and leather industry, with technical threads that are antibacterial, antistatic, water-repellent and non-flammable. Flex Internacional has manufactured interlinings for 30 years — woven, weft-insert and hair interlinings, fusible and non-fusible. Edipec wholesales elastic fabrics for intimate apparel, men's underwear and sportwear, in complete-container quantities. Vilaregut supplies the finishing touches: buttons in nylon and metal plate, cord accessories, buckles, trimmings and labels.

Leather, footwear and machinery complete the sectors. Genis Antel, formed by the merger of Genis y Rius and Antel, tans and finishes sheepskins at Vic and is described as a world leader in its trade. Pablosky manufactures children's and adolescent's footwear in Spain — more than 2 million pairs a year and more than 1,000 models per season, from a company created in 1969. Rius Group, founded in 1940 and now in its third generation, builds textile machinery from warpers and creels to circular knitting machines; NOETEX trades second-hand weaving machinery; Vifama manufactures and rebuilds footwear machinery; and Inretex closes the loop, dealing and recycling textile raw materials and selling recovered fibres to spinning, nonwovens, felt and the automotive industry.

Fashion Week & Trade Events

Madrid Fashion Week is the principal designer showcase in the capital, and the Spain Fashion Weeks page linked above follows the country's fashion week calendar as a whole. Valencia Fashion Week gives the Mediterranean coast its own designer platform, matching the Valencian Community's weight in the supply listings on this page. Barcelona's long-standing role as a fashion city — home to Mango and to much of the Catalan textile trade — makes it the other natural stage for Spanish fashion, and the city's manufacturers and component makers show at trade fairs abroad as well: Vilaregut, for example, invites buyers to its stands at Mod'Amont in Paris and SIBA in Italy.

For buyers working by category rather than by catwalk, the Fashion Trade Shows in Spain directory linked at the top of this page lists the country's trade events, and Fashion From Spain — the Trade Commission of the Embassy of Spain in New York, listed below — promotes Spanish fashion companies and products in the United States, inviting visitors to discover the new image of fashion from Spain through its site and weekly bulletin. That promotional presence reflects how export-minded the sector is: consortium 2000 is looking for manufacturers worldwide, Edipec is looking for customers abroad who can buy by the container, and Goodsworth invites offers from wholesalers in the USA and UK.

Manufacturing & Sourcing

Sourcing in Spain works because the components sit close together. A garment maker can buy open-end yarns from Calada, elastic fabrics from Edipec, interlinings from Flex Internacional, sewing threads from Hicoman — including technical threads with antibacterial, antistatic, water-repellent and non-flammable finishes — and buttons, buckles and labels from Vilaregut, all from suppliers listed on this one page. Leather buyers can go to Vic, where Genis Antel's craftsmen work with the quality and special characteristics of Spanish skins, producing antelana, napalan, doubleface, merinos and babylamb. Footwear buyers have Pablosky's Spanish-made children's shoes at volume, and factories equipping a plant can choose new machinery from Rius Group, second-hand weaving machinery from NOETEX, or manufactured and rebuilt footwear machinery from Vifama.

Two listings show the circular side of Spanish manufacturing. Inretex deals and recycles textile raw materials in assorted qualities — polyester, polypropylene, acrylic, rayon, viscose and cotton among them — buying staple fibers, tow wastes, yarn wastes and cotton clips and selling to the spinning, nonwovens, felt and automotive industries. At the craft end, Bella Di Notte's nightwear is handmade deluxe production, with hand finishes by carefully selected artisans and Italian designs from the most classic to the most sophisticated — a reminder that Spanish making spans from fibre recycling and container-load wholesale to garments finished one at a time by hand.

Retail & Market Notes

The Spanish market is led from Spain itself: Inditex runs its five listed chains from Galicia, and its model of tightly integrated design, distribution and retail is the market's defining fact — the listing below records the group at 1,169 stores across those chains, each chain linked for the visitor who wants the brands individually. The Clothing Retailers in Spain page linked above lists retailers by location across the country. Specialist retail has its own shapes here: Goodsworth's outlet in the Canary Islands sells summer and eveningwear for ladies and teenage girls in lycra and polyester, plain and printed, and actively seeks wholesalers in the USA and UK; Fashionable Swimwear Online works the import side, distributing established swimwear and lingerie labels into Spain and the Netherlands.

Trade flows in both directions. Consortium 2000, a Valencia import/export company with more than 20 years in the market, deals in t-shirts, shoes, readymade garments and sweat shirts and is looking for contact with manufacturers of those items from all over the world — Spain as a buyer as well as a maker. If you would like to read this website in Spanish, Basque or Galician, you are welcome to visit the Apparel Search language translation page.

Spain Fashion Industry Companies

Listings are given with the descriptions supplied for each business.