Javier Goyeneche

Why organisations work with Javier Goyeneche

• He built a profitable circular fashion brand from waste streams that most of the industry still treats as someone else’s problem: discarded fishing nets, post-consumer PET, used tyres, and post-industrial cotton.
• He runs Upcycling the Oceans, a working supply chain of almost 5,000 fishermen across 83 Mediterranean ports that has recovered around 2,000 tonnes of marine waste since 2015. It is a named operational system, not a campaign.
• ECOALF became the first Spanish fashion company to certify as a B Corp in 2018 and sits in the top 5% globally in the environment category. Boards questioning the credibility of their own ESG claims recognise the standard.
• He gives leaders a direct account of the commercial trade-offs of circularity: why ECOALF refuses Black Friday, why 74% of its latest collection is single-material, and how the business still reached profitability.
• Thinkers50 Radar listing (2019) and the Schwab Foundation Social Innovator of the Year award (2020) place him in the small group of sustainability founders whose work has been independently examined, including in a published IMD case study.

Biography highlights

• Founder and President of ECOALF, launched in Madrid in 2009.
• Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2019.
• Schwab Foundation Social Innovator of the Year, 2020.
• Leads the ECOALF Foundation and its Upcycling the Oceans programme, operating across 83 Mediterranean ports.
• Previously founded Fun and Basics in 1995, growing it to 350 points of sale and 70 branded stores before exiting.
• Subject of the IMD case study “ECOALF: Because there is no Planet B” by Benoit Leleux and Thomas Brochier.

Biography

Most fashion brands describe sustainability as a value. ECOALF treats it as an input constraint. The brand that Javier Goyeneche founded in Madrid in 2009 was built around a single operating question: can a fashion business be assembled entirely from recovered waste and still make money. It is now stocked in more than 1,500 stores worldwide and has been profitable since 2021.

The raw materials tell most of the story. ECOALF manufactures from post-consumer PET bottles, discarded fishing nets, used tyres, coffee grounds, and post-industrial cotton and wool. The Upcycling the Oceans programme, run through the ECOALF Foundation, works with close to 5,000 fishermen across 83 Mediterranean ports and has recovered around 2,000 tonnes of marine waste since 2015. The supply chain is physical, named, and audited.

The commercial discipline is the part boards tend to notice. ECOALF does not run seasonal sales, does not participate in Black Friday, and has pushed 74% of its latest collection into single-material garments so that items can be recycled at end of life. In 2018 it became the first Spanish fashion brand to certify as a B Corp, and in 2022 was named “Best for the World” in the environment category, placing it in the top 5% of the 5,000 B Corps globally.

The recognition follows the work rather than leading it. Thinkers50 put Goyeneche on its Radar in 2019, the Schwab Foundation named him Social Innovator of the Year in 2020, and IMD has published a business-school case study on the model. For leadership teams trying to close the distance between their ESG commitments and their operating decisions, his value is specific. He has already made those trade-offs and can show where the numbers broke and where they held.

Key speaking topics

• Circular business models in practice
• Sustainable and regenerative supply chains
• B Corp certification and corporate accountability
• Ocean plastic and waste recovery at scale
• Sustainable fashion and textile innovation
• Purpose-led entrepreneurship
• ESG credibility and greenwashing

Ideal for

• Boards and executive committees setting sustainability strategy who need an operator’s view of what circularity costs and delivers.
• Consumer, retail, and industrial leadership teams under pressure to translate ESG commitments into supply-chain decisions.
• Founders and commercial leaders building purpose-led businesses who want the honest commercial arithmetic behind a Thinkers50-recognised model.

Audience outcomes

• A concrete picture of how a circular business model functions end to end, from waste sourcing to single-material garment design to retail policy.
• A sharper test for their own sustainability claims against B Corp-grade standards.
• Language for the trade-offs involved in refusing discount-driven growth channels while remaining commercially viable.
• An operator’s account of how a multi-stakeholder supply chain, in this case with fishing communities across 83 Mediterranean ports, actually gets built.