A shoe chain was rescued from insolvency twice — the third rescue kept 16 of its stores

Marypaz was once Spain's dominant low-cost footwear chain, with roughly 400 stores across Spain, France, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the Dominican Republic and around €200 million in annual revenue at its peak. The chain had already been rescued from insolvency twice: Black Toro Capital stabilized it after a 2016 filing with €30 million in debt, and investment group Crocea Mors bought it out of a second insolvency in 2019, keeping 125 of roughly 200 remaining stores and about 650 of the workforce.

The network kept shrinking anyway. By early 2024 Marypaz was down to around 32 stores and 276 employees, with cumulative operating losses of about €18.1 million since 2020, and revenue falling from €33 million in 2022 to under €30 million in 2023. Crocea Mors had been negotiating with a Portuguese investment group for fresh capital; when that group withdrew unexpectedly, the company had no fallback and filed its third concurso de acreedores on May 6, 2024, at Seville's Commercial Court, with debt of about €21 million owed mostly to suppliers, banks and social security.

The insolvency administration found a buyer within three months: Catalan franchise executive Xavier Güell, through his company Moda Bella Trade International, agreed in August 2024 to acquire the Marypaz brand along with only 16 of the 32 remaining stores and about 88 of the 276 jobs — a fraction of a business that had already been cut down twice before.