They are as much a part of life in Spain as paella and flamenco and you see them everywhere.
Enric Bernat realised that when children ate sweets, they got themselves in a sticky mess, causing the parents grief. The solution seemed easy: put the sweet on top of a stick, and so Chupa Chups – or roughly translated, ‘Sucky Sucks’ – were born.
Today the impact of this invention can be seen throughout Spain and beyond. But though the idea has a child-like simplicity, Bernat, who died aged 80, was in fact a complex figure. Indeed, he was the archetypal, driven Catalan businessman. The lollipop magnate started his working life in short trousers in his parents’ cake shop and then became a sweet-firm representative. In the early 1950s, he was sent to Asturias to revive an ailing apple-product plant in Villanueva, which he bought in 1958. Later he recalled: “I saw sweets didn’t suit their main consumers, children. They got their hands sticky and ran into trouble with their parents,” he explained. “So I stuck a sweet on a stick”.
He called his firm Chupa Chups , constructed his own machinery, hired none-other than Salvador Dalí to design the logo, and sold the striped round sweets on wooden sticks at one peseta each. The secret of Bernat’s success was that his lollipop did not melt in the heat of kids’ hands or Spanish summers. Bernat built a huge empire on this simple idea. Today Chupa Chups is a multinational with 2,000 employees, sales in 150 countries and an annual 500€ million turnover.
But back in 1958, Spain’s economy was just about to take off: wages were still very low due to the Franco dictatorship and the country was opening up to foreign investment and trade. Chupa Chups was typical of many Catalan companies: Bernat never borrowed from banks and ran everything within the family. In what was still a largely pre-television age then, Bernat promoted his idea with a childish song, which was played on the radio. It was easy for children to learn and helped spread the word. By 1970, Bernat had gone international. And over a quarter of a century later, in 1996, about 20 million Chupa Chups products a day were consumed world-wide.
One trick has been to link the lollipop to celebrities. Madonna, the Spanish model Ester Canadas, the actor Javier Bardem, and the athlete ‘Magic’ Johnson are among some of the names who have helped make it a fashion accessory for adults – not just a nice sweet for children.
In the 1980s, the falling birth-rate meant fewer children to suck Bernat’s sweets. So, boldly, he linked lollies to anti-smoking campaigns. Johan Cruyff, then Barcelona Football Club’s manager quit smoking after a 1991 heart attack and began chain-sucking Chupa Chups on the bench. In the late 1990s Chupa Chups had reached Australia, with state backing for its slogan, “Smoke Chupa Chups”. The lollies also went into Russia and China – and on to a 1995 space shuttle.
In the same decade, despite his canny business instinct, Bernat succumbed to the common desire of Spanish industrialists to own an investment bank. Though backed by the Catalan conservative government, Bernat failed in his take-over attempts and lost money. But despite this, Bernat was able to use to cash to buy Gaudi’s Casa Batlló, an art nouveau jewel on Barcelona’s Passeig de Gràcia. In 1991, Bernat relinquished formal control of Chupa Chups to his children, who last year had to cede family control when they ran into undercapitalisation difficulties in China. It was the last tribute to Bernat’s achievement that the only bank securities required to raise money were the Chupa Chups brand itself and his Gaudi house. He is survived by his wife and five children, including Xavier, the president of Chupa Chups.
