North American textile firm Fox Head to create 46 new Jobs at European HQ in Barcelona

US Sports clothing firm Fox Head has opted for Barcelona to locate its new European and Middle Eastern operations base. The company has put €2.5m into the facility, which covers a total office space of 1,500m2 in the industrial and business park Mas Blau in El Prat de Llobregat.

The company is recruiting a staff of 46 for the offices and aims to be up and running by December, although next week it will be working out of a temporary office.

The news of the headquarters to be opened was broken by Fox Head’s European chief executive, Matthieu Bazil, who met with the Catalan government head of enterprise and employment, Francesc Xavier Mena, who in turn expressed his satisfaction with the move, which went to “underline the pull of Catalonia for overseas firms.”

The project has been given support by Invest in Catalonia, the inward investment arm of the economic agency ACC10, which specialises in attracting international capital to Catalonia.

Matthieu Bazil backed the firm’s decision to settle in Catalonia, because, “Barcelona is a city which is highly receptive of extreme sports”, and “has an interesting combination of tradition, state of the art design and new technologies.“ He went on to add that this blend makes the city of Barcelona “one of the most influential worldwide,” on a par with such illustrious metropoli as Tokyo, London, or New York even. Bazil also pointed to the handy geostrategic lie of Catalonia, as a city ideally placed for working with the entire EMEA and Asian areas, as well as mentioning the virtue of Barcelona being a pole of attraction for talent, where students from all around the world tend to converge.

Fox Head was started up in California back in 1974 and in its beginnings catered strictly for the motocross market, specialising in extra tough garments for people engaged in the sport. Since then it has expanded its product ranges to take in other disciplines, such as surfing and BMX etc. Fox Head, which sells to over 30 countries across Europe and the Middle East, is now undergoing as major repositioning of its products in these geographical areas.

Source: La Vanguardia, 25/10/2012