The next time you go to the cinema, theater, auditorium, conference, press conference, VIP box in a football stadium -if you have the opportunity to go there- look who made which chair. he sits. If it’s from a few years ago, you’re still in luck and a phone number appears on the page with the prefix 941. If not, you will see the word Ezcaray or its logo somewhere. Ascender, Ezcaray Seat or Euro Seat engraved somewhere on the seat. Coming from a town of less than 2,200 in La Rioja, known for its ski resort, mountain trails, blankets, and double Michelin-starred restaurant Echaurren, these three companies have infiltrated theaters and other communities around the world. seats where the public bend over to watch the show.
In 1955, a total of 17 men, with an individual capital of 100 pesetas, founded Sociedad Cooperativa Obrera de Ezcaray, a town west of La Rioja. A further 47,000 pesetas were given credit to purchase machinery and start their business. will be the main project cinema seats factory in spain. The partners already knew the business. They had worked in the Closed Safe Chair. The first seats of the cooperative were handcrafted from solid wood sourced from the Sierra de la Demanda, where this town is located. Juan Carlos Sáez, Head of Sales of the revamped cooperative, which has been renamed Ezcaray Internacional and is now Ezcaray Seating, explains that this material now “comes mainly from companies in Navarra and the Basque Country.”
Everything was going well. The cooperative was about to celebrate 40 years of surviving the rest of the declining industry in Ezcaray. But at the end of the last century, in 1994, two members of the organization, who have been working in this industry since the age of 14, Juan Carlos Úbeda and Gonzalo Robredo, They decided to leave and set up their own company, Euro Seating. “The invaluable union of our women, Valvanera García and Marta Crespo,” says Robredo, the company’s managing director. “They will know why they broke up, but I want to believe it will be a disagreement between the partners,” says Juan Carlos Sáez.
No one gives too many details of this separation. Gonzalo Robredo “mortgaged our houses and everything we owned to make our first injection molds” to start his company and is now Euro Seating’s “European leader in the sector and one of the best companies in the world”. In fact, of the three surviving sofa manufacturers in Ezcaray, Euro Seating is currently the most billed after the construction crisis shut down furniture manufacturers that had been established in the town for decades.
According to the accounts for 2021 presented in the Trade Registry consulted by EL PERIÓDICO DE ESPAÑA from the Prensa Ibérica group, the company managed by Robredo and Úbeda had more than 1000 entries in that year. 11.6 million euros for the manufacture and sale of chairs and armchairs. More than 80% of this amount came from transactions abroad: 4.1 million from European Union countries and 5.5 from the rest of the world. They stand out as strong markets in which Germany, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, South Africa or Mexico are located and where they have their headquarters. The company says that by 2022, these businesses have reached 13.3 million.
Theirs is the Paris La Défense Arena, Europe’s largest indoor stadium; For the Diablos Rojos baseball team (Mexico City) the Alfredo Harp Helú stadium with over 20,000 seats or the new San Mamés in Bilbao; Lope de Vega theater on Gran Vía in Madrid, among other performances, Lion King; or the theater of Campos Elíseos (Bilbao), with a system that rotates the seats 180 degrees and hides them under the floor.
Breakups “hurt”
The second divorce in the cooperative came ten years later, in 2004. New cases, materials and international markets such as Malaysia or Singapore came into play. At that very moment, in that transformation in the industry, the four partners left the organization they had been working with for decades and tried their luck separately. “We knew we wouldn’t be able to do what they did if we broke up.“, they claim from Ascender. Yet they broke up. One specialist in metal, another in carpentry, a third in designs, and the last in logistics and assemblies, they started from scratch, but with all the knowledge they had acquired in the cooperative when they were young.
I have friends who left the cooperative. We meet there, we have a wine, but we don’t talk about business because it’s uncomfortable.”
“The idea was to bet on a custom design in communities, make high-end seats, deliver products that were obviously more costly to manufacture at a national level with other companies in the industry, and we were successful here,” they explain. company. Since then they have specialized in the production of high-class seats. prize In materials such as leather, such as those installed in the Palacio de Congresos de Valencia. The main competitors in the sector at the international level, Catalan Figueras Seating and Italian Poltrona Frau.
They didn’t do bad either. While conducting business in Spain valued at just over three million euros in 2021, internationally the figure reaches almost five million euros. Seats in the venue where Nacho Cano placed his seat MalincheThe project of the new Albéniz theater or Zaryadye Concert Hall in Moscow, together with a French company, belongs to Ascender. The company has worked with famous architects such as 1999 Pritzker Prize winner Norman Foster. Zaha Hadid, Jean Nouvel or Dominique Perrault and with industrial designer Philippe Starck.
The cooperative, which previously had a family succession order, for its part, has now changed. “There are still associates who are related to the previous ones, but some unrelated young people who work here have entered. Every year, there are those who want to enter as a member. and it’s renewing because people are retiring and young people have to come in to maintain and maintain that,” says Juan Carlos Sáez.
Although Ezcaray Sofa has seen the national export market grow for several years, the trend has changed due to the opening of new cinemas and the recovery of construction work. Besides the seats of Embajadores cinemas, Teatro Real and Renoirs, Cinemas founded by Enrique González Macho, which will re-cover the rooms of Plaza de España and Princesa in the coming months. “Cinemas made now are seat-oriented. prize motorized. It was very noticed [la recuperación] because we’ve done a lot in Spain this year”, states the head of Sales.
Juan Carlos Sáez acknowledges that these distinctions “hurt”. “It’s a shame that there are so many inconsistencies and startups in a small town.‘, he adds, because according to him, ‘if we were lucky enough to be all together, we would be [empresa de butacas] Definitely the largest in Spain and one of the most important in the world”. de España (ANIEME) Between the three companies, they did business worth €25.4 million nationally and internationally over the past year.
“The problem with co-ops is as always. A co-op is a death that four bears. There are people who care, there are people who are comfortable, there are people with very different opinions, those who worry least often are those who worry least. Someone with the opposite view. If you want to feel a little sorry because you love the job.” , you encounter these conflicts,” they say from Ascender.
“It hurts partners more. I’m an employee and I have friends who go. We meet there, we have a drink, but we don’t talk about work because we’re uncomfortable,” she says. Ezcaray Seating. Gonzalo Robredo, who is about to celebrate his thirtieth anniversary of his departure from the cooperative, said: “As in any industry, it can be customary and positive. interact and discuss issues that concern their company, business and employees“.
“If the industry fails, the town disappears”
Only 300 meters from Santo Domingo de la Calzada street are the main business centers of the three most important companies in Ezcaray. Ezcaray Internacional has offices and factory, Euro Seating’s four pavilions and Ascender’s headquarters. Asking for “more industrial investment”, Ascender criticizes, “There is very little industrial space and no room to expand. When we sat down to negotiate, they were not helpful.” Among the sector of the town’s seats They employ “60 percent of the active population of Ezcaray”says Mayor Gonzalo Abajo.
Ascender closed the year with a staff of approximately 90 plus external employees; Responsible for the seats of 42 employees and 25 member cooperatives at Ezcaray Internacional; and Euro Seating currently has more than 100 employees. Most come from the streets of the town, but also from other towns in this rural environment, such as Santo Domingo de la Calzada, about 14 kilometers away, Valgañón, five kilometers away, or Ojacastro, three kilometers away. “People even come from Nájera, Haro or Logroño to work here.“, points to the foreign workforce as well as the mayor.
Although this municipality only has about 2,000 residents year-round, Ezcaray has a “floating population” that can reach 20,000, the mayor said, mainly because of the tourists and gastronomy that the ski resort and mountain roads attract throughout the year. But sofa companies are demanding an appraisal of their activities: “Everything seems to be driven by tourism, but so are we.“, they say from Ascender. “I’m from Ezcaray and here I can say that if the industry fails, the town disappears because where people work, they do it on couches and blankets,” concludes Juan Carlos Sáez.