ALICANTE, Spain — In just 40 years, Juan Climent has built a successful textile conglomerate called Aurea Group which holds Lizzo, Pepe Penalver and Elite Décor, a distributor of 20 brands in Spain alone.

Since 2001, Jose, his younger brother by 14 years, is General Manager of Lizzo, a top end   editeur brand. Jose is also Juan’s full partner in Aurea while Juan owns Alhambra Internacional, the less expensive (16-50 Euro range) line behind Lizzo which is 70-100 Euros).  Alhambra is selling in 105 countries, Juan says, with 75 percent of his sales outside of Spain including sales to Russia, Brazil and China. “This year 2014 is off to a good start for us,” Juan says. Juan Climent, President, Alhambra International

Although he admits to working 20 hours a day, Juan still manages to create his business world while still enjoying the good life in Alicante, his home town where he began life as a converter, then as a mill and now as a convertor and designer of products made by other mills.

His business, which also includes Décor Elite, a wholesaler of up market brands, accounts for $40 million in sales today, making him one of the largest customers of European mills in Spain, Belgium and Italy as well as mills in Turkey and India. He says he is doing 80 percent of his business with 20 mills today.

Alhambra and Lizzo offer same day service. If you order before noon, it can ship goods by four o’clock that same day, he says. ”We had a great success at Heimtextil this year with Alhambra and Deco Off was very good for Lizzo, which had more hot colors in its collection than ever before.”  

Every May, it’s no accident that you’ll see Juan breezing around Como during the Proposte Fair because he has relationships with many suppliers as well as wholesalers worldwide. Anyone who knows him will say  that he does business with a certain style, like that of a Spanish nobleman with a soft touch but you still know he means business! He just enjoys the ride so much…all of it! (Ask him to tell you the story about a Spanish horseman who rolled into Alicante one night long ago looking for a night’s lodging which he was denied because he was soiled and dusty. As a result, he built a hotel across the street which blocked all of the light to the other hotel.) In the last few years, with his purchase of Pepe Penalver of Spain in 2010, he got heavily involved in the retail business with the Maison Décor chain that he then sold to KA International, the decorating specialty group.  As of 2011, Juan owns a minority interest of 10 percent of KA which also bought Banak Import last year, 160 more stores based in Valencia. Juan is an advisor on all of the KA activities.

With Pepe Penalver, Juan has five shops and a 15,000 square foot warehouse in Madrid; but it was this purchase that rocked his world; Penalver sales plummeted in one year’s time (2010)  from about $13 million in sales to under $5 million. He is in the process of working out a solution with his investors and a solution should be forthcoming, he says.

At the same time, he has a business to run and he is heavily involved in the design aspects of his Alhambra Collection. He spends most of his time either on the road or in his Alicante studio as part of a sizeable warehouse and head office in Alicante. His warehouse manager Javier Altuna says there are 25,000 pieces on the shelf in Alhambra’s 33,000 square foot warehouse in Alicante.

What little time he has left in his day is devoted to his family, wife and children. He loves to sail when he can--off the coast of his beloved Alicante.

Alhambra participates in Heimtextil, Decorex and Deco Off.  “This last show in Heimtextil and Paris were both one of the best shows of the last five years,” he says. He also does private road shows with his partners—wholesaler around the world who sell Alhambra and Lizzo Collections.