António Moreira Gonçalves
Specialized in clothing manufacturing and design, Crivedi textile premiered a new business area in 2020: textile masks, marketed through a new private label, Häppo. The bet is already bearing fruit, with this new segment compensating for the company’s losses in the fashion sector, and even registering a growth of 15%, which allowed Crivedi to close the year with a turnover of around seven million euros.
“Obviously, the masks are not our core business, but they are a complement to our catalogue”, says António Archer, Crivedi’s General Manager. In June 2020, the company was already producing 12 thousand masks a day, and decided to launch the Häppo brand, with dozens of different designs, and its own online sales platform.
The dedication to the project paid off, with mask sales compensating for the losses caused by the pandemic in the clothing sector. “We had a 25% drop in clothing, but that was largely offset by masks. We ended the year with a growth of 15%, from 6.1 million in 2019 to seven million in 2020”, he says.
A bet that the company wishes to pursue by launching a new collection. “The mask is an accessory that came to stay. People have gotten used to it and will probably continue using it when they go to a hospital or when the flu season comes, for example”, states António Archer.
In addition to the mask business, Crivedi designs and produces men’s and women’s clothing for major international brands. Among its regular customers are names such as Carolina Herrera, Bimba y Lola, Adolfo Dominguez and Purificacion García.