Aníbal Pino (Pequeño Palmero): "Evacuated by the volcano, we returned to Lanzarote, where we had fallen in love"

The man from La Palma, Aníbal Pino, and the Dutch woman, Marsha Koornneef, met in Lanzarote, but they lived in La Palma, where their two children were born, when Koornneef saw the need to create “clothing that suited the archipelago's climate, the good temperatures that continue in winter” when the archipelago's stores fill up with coats that few need.

Koornneef took several sewing courses in La Palma and when they were about to launch the brand Pequeño Palmero “the volcano erupted, we were evacuated, the idea was put on hold and we had to move,” Pino explains in an interview with Ekonomus.

Finally, the house was saved by four kilometers and the lava reached the sea. But the trauma of the evacuation led them to start a new life in Lanzarote, the island where they had met as hotel entertainers twenty years earlier. 

So it has finally been in Lanzarote where they have launched the children's clothing brand Pequeño Palmero, with “garments made of organic cotton, which breathe and are adapted to the autumn and winter of the Canary Islands, warm but comfortable”. Marsha juggles the company with a job in Lanzarote's tourism sector and Aníbal with a job as a boat skipper. 

“We have been very well received by the people of Lanzarote, who are wonderful people. We live in Playa Blanca, which we think is the best place in the world to raise a family,” shares Pino. 

"Wonderful ladies cut and sew garment by garment in Gran Canaria"

The entrepreneur from La Palma clarifies that it is his wife who manages the brand: “I help with marketing and transport and talk to the garment factory in Gran Canaria, but she decides on the designs and talks to the fabric factories in Holland”. 

“The prints are Nordic style due to their colors and design, but we choose those that fit with the Canary Islands, like little bananas, avocados, sun, sand…”, shares Pino, who organized the company's first fashion show on the Lanzarote beach of Caletón Blanco. 

Once the designs are chosen, the factory in Holland prints the fabrics and sends them to a garment factory in Gran Canaria: “The garments are made 100% in the Canary Islands. The Gran Canaria factory is very family-run, they are wonderful ladies who cut and sew garment by garment and give each little garment its finish and soul”. 

When asked about his main clients, Pino explains that they are “Canarian mothers. Many of them, who live outside the archipelago, and who like to take things that identify their children with the Canary Islands”. 

Among the islands, La Palma is where the company has the most sales, “I have many contacts there and the word has spread a lot and then Lanzarote, of course, where we have three points of sale”. Pequeño Palmero's pieces can also be found in stores in Tenerife and Gran Canaria. Pequeño Palmero does not yet sell online, but plans to include this service in its upcoming collections.