The Catalan fashion firm TCN, founded by Totón Comella and Josep Maria Donat in 1985 and owned by the Nath group since 2019, is not having an easy time recovering the position it once held in the textile industry. The high-standing brand suffers a decline in its business, barely a year after launching a growth plan with which they hoped to make up lost ground. Juncal Cucullo, the general director that Nath incorporated at the beginning of last year, left TCN in the spring of this 2022.
The firm also paralyzed part of the production and has not launched a clothing collection for this fall-winter season. In addition, it keeps its flagship store temporarily closed, on Mestre Nicolau street in Barcelona, in the upper area of Diagonal avenue – a sign hanging in the window says that for inventory until November 6, although yesterday it was still closed. The establishment in Sant Cugat del Vallès is working as an oultlet, they only sell clothes from past seasons. Same as on their website.
Nor has it displayed the eight corners in El Corte Inglés that it announced for this 2022. In fact, in Barcelona it only had swimsuits and accessories for sale this summer at the El Corte Inglés center in Plaza Catalunya. In November 2021, Cucullo explained that the goal for that year was to bill 2.8 million euros and increase revenue by 60% for the present 2022. An ambitious goal that, given the circumstances, seems difficult to achieve.
Business sources explain, however, that TCN is not going extinct, that Nath intends to give continuity to the brand and that it will launch a new spring/summer collection in 2023. The group, the respondents continue, is working to give it projection again and prepare news. In their favor, they emphasize, a consolidated brand plays, with a reputation and loyal clientele. But that has to adapt to changing times and achieve stability.
TCN had enjoyed prestige in the 1990s and early 2000s but entered a phase of commercial and economic decline. Comella and Donat sold the company to the Endurance Partners fund in 2017 and in 2019 Nath bought TCN from Endurance, which had filed for bankruptcy.
Comella and Donat then returned to the company they founded in executive positions with the intention of reviving the brand. Their return was short-lived and at the beginning of 2020 they left TCN again. The historic Catalan firm is now back to find its way.
