Madrid – Tropicfeel, the emerging fashion firm from Spanish entrepreneur Alberto Espinós, is taking a decisive leap forward in its brand-building process with the appointment of Peter Hudson as creative director. The American will bring everything he learned during his two decades with the innovation and development team at sports multinational Nike to the role.
Hudson himself confirmed his appointment as Tropicfeel’s new creative director on social media nearly a week ago. He had been linked to the company since October 2023, initially as a creative and brand consultant. He held a hybrid role that saw him split his time between the US, where he is from and resides, and Spain, where Tropicfeel is headquartered and maintains its operations from its central offices in Barcelona. As a result of the good rapport and connections established through these initial collaborations, the firm and Hudson decided to go a step further, with Hudson's designation as Tropicfeel's new creative director. With his appointment, the firm is starting to gain traction, clearly preparing to disrupt the “adventure” microcosm around which it is trying to specialise and build its distinctive brand identity.
In this objective, Hudson will bring to this new stage as creative director of Tropicfeel all the experience he has accumulated throughout his extensive professional career. A career marked by 20 years with the American sports multinational Nike from 1996 to 2016. Over those two decades, he held various positions of responsibility, starting as director of the tennis footwear design department from 1996 to 2000. He then became global vice president of footwear design from 2008 to 2012. From this role, he rose to vice president of global innovation for Nike's Converse brand. Finally, between 2013 and 2016, he served as global vice president of design and innovation for Converse. In this position, he was responsible for building a unique design philosophy around the iconic American footwear firm, establishing its creative strategy, and leading and training its footwear, apparel and accessories design teams. It seems that he will now begin to put these skills into practice as the new creative director of Tropicfeel.
Third ‘ex-Nike’ in Tropicfeel’s ranks
With Hudson's appointment, the Spanish fashion firm is not hiding its intentions to scale up its operations and gain more ground in fashion, especially in the “adventure” segment in which it is trying to specialise. It is also becoming clear that Tropicfeel, as a project, is proving to be attractive to figures with well-established careers in the fashion world.
Regarding both issues, starting with the scaling up of its operations within the fashion sector, the Spanish fashion firm has told the financial publication Expansión that Hudson's first project as creative director is to lead the design of the “Terra.001”. These new trainers will help the Spanish firm strengthen its position in footwear, which, according to figures provided at the close of its last full financial year of 2023 — the most recent year for which financial data is available — was its main source of income. It had consolidated this position after increasing its turnover by 47 percent. This growth was higher than that recorded that year by its second-largest product category, rucksacks and accessories (43 percent), and even more so compared to the performance of its fashion and apparel collections (10 percent).
Meanwhile, this specialisation within Tropicfeel's creative team with the arrival of Hudson as creative director cannot be separated from the information that FashionUnited reported last February. At that time, we reported that Jordi Puig Alsina, first cousin of Puig's executive chairman and former member of its board of directors, and Carlos Homedes Carballo, an executive with more than 26 years of experience at Nike, had joined Tropicfeel's share capital and board of directors. These were joined by Ignacio Serrat, as an observer rather than a director on Tropicfeel's board, also bringing his nearly 20 years of experience at Nike to the company. Serrat held various positions of responsibility at the multinational, including sales director for Iberia, vice president of sales for all markets in the Asia-Pacific and Latin America region, and finally vice president and general manager of Nike for Southern Europe, Middle East and Africa, a position he held from 2018 until he left the sports multinational in 2021.
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