eCommerce success story: Brava Fabrics

Just enter their store and you are greeted by T-shirts featuring watermelons, rubber ducks or characters such as the iconic Snoopy, made from organic cotton and bearing the B Corp sustainability certification. Brava Fabrics has been making eco-friendly fashion with humour since 2015 and, pay attention, making money from it.

But beyond its products, its business model or its strategy for marketing, what makes it a case study in its own right is a surprising move it made in 2025: giving up an entire sales channel to improve profitability.

On our blog, we like to bring you stores that do things their own way, and this Barcelona brand is one worth analysing: a product with personality, production consistent with its message and business decisions that go against the current. Behind this brand are two founders who were clear that they wanted to start a business together long before even deciding which sector to enter.

Brava Fabrics was founded in Barcelona in 2015 by Ramón Barbero and Iván Monells. The two met while studying for an MBA at one of Catalonia’s leading business schools. Both had experience, with training in economics, computing and industrial engineering, and entered fashion almost exclusively because of the numbers: macroeconomic data showed that men’s fashion eCommerce had taken off strongly in Spain.

So they did some sums and raised around 25,000 euros, which they completed with a couple of loans. The results were not long in coming, as, in their first few months operating as Brava Fabrics, they had already exceeded 150,000 euros in sales.

The proposition was clear from the start: plenty of personality with unusual prints (coffee makers, deer, watermelons, dog faces) so that a Brava shirt could be recognised from a distance, and sustainability they can substantiate, with certifications and labels, from the fabric to the packaging. They sum it up as "fun and timeless" fashion, but I would add the attribute “sustainable”.

I have already told you quite a lot about the men’s shirts; they are garments with a distinctive style, casual, colourful… more the shirt an advertising creative would wear than a bank branch manager (at least if we are talking about archetypes).

But Brava did not stop there; it soon broadened its range to women’s clothing, swimwear, underwear and coats. "Everything except footwear", Monells said in an interview.

But product diversification always maintained consistency in production: they work with:

Let us talk about sustainability and how it is demonstrated: Brava Fabrics is a certified B Corp company, a standard that audits governance, environmental impact, treatment of workers and transparency.

According to the brand’s own data, making one of its T-shirts reduces environmental impact by around 75% and water consumption by almost 90% compared with a conventional one, which consumes around 2,700 litres.

We have discussed product and commitment to the environment, but we still need to address design and its evolution.

Brava continues to place a strong emphasis on its original prints, but here an even more commercial aspect of its design appears: licences. Since 2023 it has produced collections with Peanuts (yes, Snoopy and his gang), which now coexists on the website with its own prints.

Brava started as a native eCommerce business, but they soon identified that physical contact multiplied conversion and marketing performance. That is why, in 2018, the brand opened its first store in Barcelona, followed by Madrid and, in 2023, its entry into the Balearic Islands with the store in Palma de Mallorca.

Meanwhile, it built a structure with 4 channels:

We come to a decision that makes this eCommerce success story stand out. In 2025 Brava stopped selling on marketplaces. It was a deliberate choice that cost it around 300,000 euros and saw it close the year with 4.9 million in revenue, which is 6% less than in 2024.

Ultimately, it is true that marketplaces brought volume on the one hand, but eroded margin and brand control on the other. Not to mention the instability of growing while depending on the judgement of a third party that can exclude you at any time.

The diversification we discussed earlier is not just about channels; it also concerns the markets Brava targets.

The business is international from end to end: in fact, its main market is Germany, with Spain in second place and France taking the bronze medal, but this brand sells in more than 30 countries around the world. To give you an idea, in some financial years, sales outside Spain have exceeded 90% of the total.

The journey has had its turns, and that probably makes this success story more valuable than those “blessed” stories that have always gone upwards (and from which it is sometimes difficult to draw conclusions).

In 2021 Brava generated 3.6 million in revenue (2.8% more than in 2020) and in 2022 it reached around 4 million. At the time it drew up an ambitious plan (6 million in 2023, 8 in 2024 and 11 in 2025)… but they were too optimistic: 2023 ended in losses.

What came next is what deserves credit. The company was able to correct its course and achieve two consecutive profitable financial years, with 113,206 euros in profit in 2024 and around 100,000 in 2025.

With a workforce of around 20 people, the goal for 2026 is to generate between 5.5 and 6 million in revenue, supported by the store network, and maintain EBITDA at 10%. Along the way it raised funding through crowdfunding on Crowdcube, went through the Lanzadera accelerator (Juan Roig’s) and brought in funds such as Ábac Capital, Siesta Ventures or Impact Partners, with the founders always retaining the majority of the capital.

All of Brava’s visual personality (the prints, the colour, the irreverent touch) fits naturally into its feeds.

Although their communication cannot be described as particularly strong, undoubtedly a key area to optimise, this is a brand that can be understood at a glance, and that is exactly where social media performs best: a recognisable product, carefully crafted photography and a casual tone that matches the garments.

They maintain active profiles on Facebook, Instagram and a surprisingly good one on Pinterest.

Let us look at some examples of how they communicate, which is always the best way to find inspiration.

As I was saying, I really like their Pinterest channel; it is a statement of intent. It has many boards organised either by licences (Playmobil, Peanuts, Kodak…), by lifestyle or by collections (summer, autumn, winter and spring).

It is not afraid to use content to provide context; I particularly like cases such as this one, where the T-shirt’s theme is coffee, but they complete the board with inspirational images, infographics… the T-shirt appears with a carefully crafted aesthetic and fits perfectly into the user experience.

On Instagram and Facebook, where they use double posting (publishing the same content simultaneously), we also find examples of interest.

Carousels combining photos and video to present their catalogue of licences and, at the same time, communicate sales, as in this very good example.