Hawkers’ expansion traces back to a single date on the calendar: October 2017, when Alejandro Betancourt Lopez led a €50 million Series A investment in the Spanish sunglasses brand based in Elche. Everything that followed, the leadership role, the storefronts, the store count, traces back to that round. The brand had built its name online before that investment; what came next turned it into a retailer with a physical footprint.
Weeks after the round closed, he became president of the company. That title put him in charge of fundraising, institutional relations, and oversight of the CEO, CFO, and COO, not day-to-day product, marketing, or pricing decisions. Betancourt Lopez also holds the largest ownership stake in the company, a position that ties his return directly to how well the stores perform.
2018 to 2025: Storefronts Multiply
Physical stores began opening in 2018, moving Hawkers from an online-first brand into a retail presence across Spain and beyond. Store count didn’t spike overnight. It built year over year, store by store, city by city, a pace that matched a brand still learning what physical retail required after years of selling almost entirely online.
That expansion had reached 60 stores by 2025. Betancourt Lopez remained president and largest shareholder throughout that stretch, still focused on fundraising and institutional ties rather than which frames sat on which shelf. Sixty locations, built store by store since 2018, mark the visible result of a funding decision made years earlier.
What the Timeline Says About His Approach
Betancourt Lopez has described his own involvement as a dial rather than a switch, turning attention up when a company stumbles and stepping back when it runs well on its own. Hawkers, by his own account, has mostly needed the dial turned down. Fundraising and institutional relationships remain his focus; the store openings, the staffing, and the daily pricing calls belong to the management team he oversees rather than directs.
“When things fly by themselves and they go so well, you just follow them through,” he has said of companies executing without heavy oversight. With 60 stores open by 2025 and the leadership structure unchanged since 2017, that description fits what the Hawkers timeline shows. A brand that started as a single funding round now counts sixty storefronts as the measure of what patient backing, left alone to work, can produce. Two figures anchor the whole account: a €50 million Series A in October 2017, and 60 stores open by 2025.