Risign value Luis Seamless fashion, Monserrate resilience and risk-taking Chief Executive Officer of Create Luis Monserrate is aware that fashion is not only isation to delivery to the end customer. This approach, he created with needle and thread. “We make fashion,acknowledges, allows them to “offer quality and design at but not textile fashion”, he summarises to explaintruly competitive prices”. the philosophy behind Create, a company he launched in The outbreak of the pandemic marked a turning point 2019 and which has transferred to the world of householdfor the company. The exponential increase in demand “al- appliances the principles of design, verticality and acces-most killed us with success”, and forced the company to gear sibility that have revolutionised sectors including fashion,up to a higher level. Those months presented major opera- furniture and sport. tional challenges and confirmed a lesson that Monserrate Luis Monserrate was fashion director at Aliexpressrepeats like a mantra: resilience, adaptability and staying (owned by Alibaba) between September 2017 and May the course, even in the worst of storms. 2018. The executive joined the Chinese e-commerce giantNot all the decisions, he admits, have been easy. “There after serving as director of the digital division at Pepe Jeansare aspects that keep you awake at night, but leadership also (now All We Wear Group) for three years. Monserrate, whomeans making decisions with the good of the project and the graduated with a degree in Business Administration andteam in mind”, he argues. He believes his greatest virtue is Management from the Autonomous University of Madrid inhis ability to communicate and bring people together to build 2005, has worked for companies including Zara, Iberecuestresignificant, high-impact projects; his worst flaw is impatience. and Deloitte over the course of his career. Convinced of Spanish entrepreneurial talent, Monserrate Before launching Create, Monserrate had previously ex-compares the local ecosystem with other markets such as plored the world of entrepreneurship. In 2008, he launchedSilicon Valley and identifiestwo gaps: scale and the reg- Homing.com, a pioneer in the vertical sale of furniture andulatory framework. “Here, risk-taking is rarely rewarded. home décor. Although the project, in his own words, didCulturally, we should place greater value on anyone who not achieve the success he expected, it left him with es-risks their wealth and time to generate prosperity”, he ar- sential lessons that are now part of his leadership DNA: “itgues. He also argues that Spain is not exploiting its full was very enriching; many of the things we do today haveinternational potential: “from design to gastronomy, we their origins in that experience”, he recalls. could be much more prominent globally, but we lack the The opportunity to launch Create arose from a simplemarketing to be visible in the cultural imagination”. but ambitious observation: in a market dominated by tra-Looking tenyears ahead, he imagines a more global ditional brands, no one was applying a fashion approach toCreate, a benchmark in a new concept of its products as small or large appliances. The challenge, then, was twofold:part of home décor and experience, competing head-to- to focus on design quality without being tied to fleetinghead with the major international players. And, likewise, trends and to dispense with traditional retail in order tohe will be leading with the same blend of rigour and pur- have complete control over the process, from conceptual-pose that has brought him this far. 94