Two entrepreneurs aged 54 and 43 run a company from Valladolid with more than 12,000 active products in up to more than 20 different delivery marketplaces around the world, among which Amazon or Privalia stand out. These two brothers have ‘broken’ e-commerce with their technological and fashion products, managing to make more than 200,000 shipments last year.
Surely if you bought on one of the most famous international online commerce platforms you came across some of the references sold by one of the brands that belong to ‘Urban Entrepreneurship’. This company from Valladolid has established itself as one of the most important in Spanish electronic commerce, after 15 years of operation.
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Daniel España is one of the heads of the company based in Valladolid, which has 2 factories in China and another in Italy. He himself explains that he maintains his headquarters in Spain because breaking with his roots is not so easy: “If I could, I would take it to China, it’s not because I want to. But of course, leaving and taking my children and my parents not seeing their grandchildren… well no,” he defends in an interview with The Spanish.
He started in the business world 15 years ago with two brothers. One of them worked for a large sports distribution brand and, knowing the sector well, they decided to start marketing footwear that they brought from Argentina. “We have family in Argentina, it’s all coincidences,” says Daniel.
At first they distributed the product in small stores, but they soon saw that there was no way to go that way: “We distributed it in small stores, but in 2008 we saw that there was no future for that. And then, we opted for electronic commerce.” And that’s when everything started to take off.
Little by little they became a business giant, with factories in China and Italy, and a presence on all the major online sales platforms. Daniel insists that “the big ones want to have us, because our brands are recognized on the Internet.”
For Daniel China “is on another level”
These Valladolid businessmen opted from the beginning to manufacture in China. According to Daniel, in Europe there is a distorted image of the country, because there “they manufacture the cheap and the most expensive.” In his opinion, Europe believes it is at the forefront, but the reality is different: in China “they are at a completely different level from us”, and also “they have the raw materials.” That makes it a more profitable place to produce, even if everything then has to be transported to other countries.
For Daniel, “Europe is consumption, because purchasing power is high, so we dedicate ourselves to consuming, not to manufacturing or anything, to consuming. The United States is committed to innovation. But China is the world’s factory.” And he adds that there “they are more disciplined than us”, an opinion that he shares with businessman Adrián Díaz, and that they also have “a mentality of efficiency and entrepreneurship that we have lost a long time ago.”
One of the keys to its success was to robotize its warehouses
The Urban Entrepreneurship headquarters in Valladolid is completely digitalized. Daniel sums it up like this: “For us, entering a new marketplace or a new sales website is a very simple process because we have done all the computer development.”
Playing in the first division of electronic commerce has also forced them to invest heavily. Since 2021 they have robotized all the warehouses: “We have been spending a lot of money for 4 years but we are beginning to see results, you achieve a very high performance in sales.”
Today they are one of the most powerful e-commerce companies in Castilla y León and Spain.
The most complicated thing about maintaining activity in Valladolid is finding personnel with experience in the sector. Daniel has assumed it: “I know what I’m risking, I know that I have to train who I hire and lose a year.” Electronic commerce “is a super dynamic world” where you have to be learning all the time, which is why it looks for “people who are awake, eager and not afraid of change.”
He recognizes that “in Madrid the opportunities are infinitely higher. In other words, we would be billing maybe triple or quadruple, but the family pulls.” Furthermore, he assures that in Castilla y León they have not received support from the administrations.
Even so, he defends that Valladolid “is a very comfortable city to live in, very comfortable to work in and you are two hours from Madrid.”