The encyclopedia · Strategy & Leadership · Strategic decision · 2022–2025
Desigual closed 100 stores to survive — it is now a third of the size it was
Two years, 100 stores closed, €98M spent: Desigual emerged in April 2025 profitable again but at €332M of sales — a third of what it was.
Desigual · 2025-04-16
What happened
When Desigual published its 2024 accounts in April 2025, the numbers told the price of the previous two years: revenue of €332 million, down another 12% and barely a third of what the Barcelona label turned over a decade earlier, when it was challenging Inditex and Mango for Spain's fashion crown. The estate had been cut to match: from 393 single-brand stores at the end of 2022 to 282 — more than a hundred closures in two years, on a transformation programme that had absorbed €98 million of investment over five.
The uncomfortable consolation in the accounts was the bottom line: a pre-tax result of €3.1 million, back in the black after the transformation years. Desigual had stopped shrinking profitably — smaller, thinner, but no longer losing.
The shrinkage is the tail of a longer arc. The brand that made its name on colour and excess peaked around 2014, then spent a decade cutting: fewer stores, fewer staff, a founder's plan to 'resurrect' the company. Each restructuring promised the floor; each round the floor moved down. What remained by 2025 was a label a third of its peak size, profitable on that size.
In late 2025 the company declared phase two: a new strategic plan to 2029, aimed at growing again — new openings, new markets including India. The closures, it said, were over. The stores kept closing anyway.
Why it happened
- The estate was built for a market position that no longer existed — 393 stores for a brand the market had re-priced to a third of its peak
- Closing 100 stores cost €98 million over five years: the transformation consumed cash while revenue kept falling, so profitability returned only at a much smaller base
- The brand's identity — loud, colourful, maximal — aged badly against the minimalism and speed of the decade's winners
- Profitability at a third of peak size is survival, not recovery — and the phase-two growth plan arrives before the last of the closures has finished
The lesson
A store network is a bet on brand momentum. When the momentum dies, the estate does not shrink gracefully — it costs real money to close a hundred doors and arrive a third of the size you were.
Aftermath
Phase two runs to 2029: growth targeted again, new openings promised, India on the list, while the store count keeps adjusting. Founder Thomas Meyer's resurrection plan has saved the company by shrinking it; the open question is whether what remains can grow without the footprint it just paid €98 million to dismantle.
Sources
- Modaes — Desigual, fase 2 de la transformación: nuevo plan estratégico hasta 2029 para volver a crecer
- Crónica Global — La textil Desigual sigue cerrando tiendas y vuelve a los beneficios (13 Nov 2025)
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