The textile company creates an accelerator in collaboration with IESE that seeks to invest in fifty companies in the medium term.
Mango has turned on the radar for innovative start-ups in the fashion industry. To do this, the Spanish company has created a fashion start-up accelerator in collaboration with the IESE Business School.
With this initiative, the company seeks to promote innovation, detect new growth opportunities and participate in the development of new technologies or business models.
The accelerator, named Mango StartUp Studio, is interested in investing in European companies and ideas that are in the development phase or have a recently launched product. The priority areas of interest for Mango are sustainability, technology and any link in the value chain of the textile business, from product creation to distribution. The Spanish company plans to invest in more than fifty companies in the medium term.
Mango will enter as a seed capital investor in the selected companies. To do this, the Mango accelerator, headed by Belén Rallo, will have a budget of up to three million euros.
In this way, Mango seeks to “know first-hand the European fashion entrepreneurship ecosystem, establish contacts with the main players in the sector and assess trends and new disruptive technologies, developing real cases together with start-ups, either by the high value that they can contribute as well as their future potential”, explains its CEO Toni Ruiz.
The executive will chair a new committee created to select possible candidates for the accelerator, which will also include Jonathan Andic, director of Mango Man; Elena Carasso, director of Online and Client of Mango; Margarita Salvans, financial director; Belén Rallo, director of the accelerator, and Paula Sancho, representing IESE Business School, who will help Mango in the selection of projects. As explained in the company, the rest of the members of the management committee may intervene depending on the profile of each selected company.
Mango is also open to offering the accelerator’s start-ups a physical location that, depending on the type of project, could be the group’s headquarters, its logistics center or the innovation hub in the 22@Barcelona district.
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