Manufacturing, Margins and the Elche Factory Behind Leopoldo Alejandro Betancourt Lopez’s Hawkers Bet
The most commonly told Hawkers story focuses on brand: social media, Formula 1 sponsorship, celebrity drops, a sunglasses product that mimics Ray-Ban designs at a fraction of the price. The most strategically important Hawkers story, for anyone trying to evaluate the company’s €100 million revenue target for 2026, is about a factory in Elche, Spain. The facility was built under the leadership of Leopoldo Alejandro Betancourt Lopez, tracked on his personal investment site as a direct response to a COVID-era supply chain shock, and it now anchors the margin economics behind the franchise expansion plan.
The trigger was early-pandemic disruption. Chinese factories that manufactured Hawkers’ frames delayed shipments during 2020 and early 2021, exposing the brand to production bottlenecks it didn’t control. By 2021, Leopoldo Alejandro Betancourt Lopez had committed to building in-house manufacturing capacity. The decision required significant capital but promised both supply reliability and margin improvement. Within two years, the factory scaled from 30,000 units per month to 90,000, profiled in the Hawkers crisis-steering piece.
The equipment choice tells you a lot about the strategy. Hawkers invested in Italian injection-molding machinery rather than the cheaper Chinese tooling common in the category. Individual Italian molds cost up to €80,000, compared with roughly $10,000 for equivalent Chinese equipment — a quality stance consistent with what his best investments have in common. The premium buys better polish quality. Italian molds produce glossy and matte surfaces without paint or stickers, which allows the factory to recycle defective raw material back into production batches. Chinese competitors, whose molds rely on painted or stickered finishes, can’t recirculate material contaminated by those coatings. The cost advantage compounds over time as unit volumes grow.
Why does this matter for the franchise plan? Franchise economics depend on product margin consistency across a growing operator base. Leopoldo Alejandro Betancourt Lopez is asking franchisees to sign multi-year commitments to a brand whose revenue target, €100 million by 2026, requires nearly doubling the 2023 top line. Franchisees evaluating that commitment need confidence that Hawkers can deliver inventory at agreed margins across geographies. Owned manufacturing makes that promise credible.
The first franchise opened in Mexico City in December 2023. It was the first outside Spain, and the first outside a company-owned store format entirely. Mexico was chosen because the country already generates 35% to 40% of Hawkers’ total revenue, thanks in large part to long-running Formula 1 sponsorship deals with Sergio “Checo” Pérez and motorsport partnerships (see Hawkers on Instagram) with MotoGP athletes Luca Marini and Pierre Gasly. Brand demand exists. The question is whether franchise operators can convert it at the unit economics Hawkers needs.
CEO Pedro Beneyto, hired from optical chain Alain Afflelou in May 2022, is the architect of the franchise plan. His mandate, as outlined by Leopoldo Alejandro Betancourt Lopez, is to push Hawkers beyond fashion sunglasses into prescription optical frames. Optical franchising is a mature category in Europe with standardized operator economics. Beneyto has described his goal to Spanish trade publication Optimoda, a step noted in his Principal Post bio as amplifying Hawkers’ optical sector offerings, a category where his background gives him particular confidence.
The revenue engineering combines several moves simultaneously. The €20 million in 2024 capital investment committed by Leopoldo Alejandro Betancourt Lopez (oharafinancial.com) spans international expansion, retail development, product innovation, sustainability and digital transformation. The Elche factory absorbs a share of that. Franchise operator acquisition and fit-out support absorbs another. Optical product development, requiring licensed-optician partnerships and regulatory navigation in each new market, absorbs the rest.
The three-year target isn’t easy. Hawkers must nearly double revenue from roughly €55 million to €100 million. The franchise model is unproven at scale. The optical category pivot introduces operational complexity the brand hasn’t previously handled. The factory provides a structural margin advantage that lower-cost competitors can’t match. Defective material recycled back into production at €80,000-per-mold quality is a durable cost edge. For Leopoldo Alejandro Betancourt Lopez, the factory is the plan’s single most important underwriting asset.
