one has a turnover of 250 million and the other is going into bankruptcy

Mr. Wonderful appealed to the Supreme Court against Ale-hop in January. nine months later is about to enter bankruptcy. The chronology reveals that the court battle was never about intellectual property: it was the last attempt to externalize one’s own failure.

Why is it important. Two companies that sell “cuquis” products with positive messages have had opposite trajectories. One has been litigating while sinking. The other has been growing without going into debt.

The facts. Mr. Wonderful sued Ale-hop in 2021 for unfair competition, alleging that he copied his style of animated objects, motivational phrases and pastel tones. In 2022, the Commercial Court No. 5 of Valencia rejected the claim. In 2023, The Provincial Court ratified the ruling. And in January 2025 sent an appeal to the Supreme Court as the last bullet.

In October 2025 it is about to enter bankruptcy.

The argument. The courts have been clear: the kawaii style (objects with eyes and expressiveness) has been in the public domain since the sixties. “Styles are not the object of a monopoly,” the Court ruled. That Mr. Wonderful applied it with initial success (his first years were of meteoric growth) did not give him a monopoly over it.

In addition, Ale-hop had products of this style in its catalog in 2010, a year before Mr. Wonderful was established as a company.

The figures. While they litigated, they achieved very different financial results. Figures for the year 2023 (last year with figures for both presented):

• Billing: Ale-hop, 224 million euros (there are already 254). Mr. Wonderful, 26 million.
• Number of stores: more than 300 in five countries for Ale-hop. Mr. Wonderful he was 50 and now he has 10 left.
• Margin: 20% profitability on income for Ale-hop, 7 million euros of losses for Mr. Wonderful.

It is a difference in model, not scale. They are two opposite philosophies.

1. Ale-hop has a rotating catalog of 6,000 references that is constantly renewed. It “forces” the customer to return frequently. It buys directly from factories in large volumes (the key behind its high margins despite low prices) and has a strict anti-debt philosophy.
2. Mr. Wonderful was born in 2011 as a design studio specialized in personalized wedding invitations. Its cheerful tone and colorful aesthetic connected with its clientele, and within a few years it became a phenomenon. In 2016 it reached 30 million in turnover. It was present in El Corte Inglés, in Fnac, in stationery stores throughout Spain. Then he decided to make the leap to his own stores, but the pandemic arrived right after and completely hit a business model that depended on physical traffic. Sales fell and losses began.

The sentence. In October 2024, A Barcelona judge approved a restructuring plan for Mr. Wonderful. CaixaBank, its main financial creditor with 6.8 million debt (45.47% of liabilities), he challenged it and now justice has ruled him right.

The sentence, collected by Five Daysis devastating:

• He questions whether the sales forecasts – an increase of 10 million between 2024 and 2028 – are “reasonable” or based on “a historical reality.”
• He considers it “surprising” that the company did not have audited accounts or updated sales data during the judicial process.
• And he concludes that the projections “cannot be objectively justified.”

It’s the same kind of argument the courts used against Mr. Wonderful in the Ale-hop case: your numbers don’t hold up in reality. Only this time they weren’t talking about whether they had the right to claim a style, but rather whether the company was viable.

The Court adds something else: given that Mr. Wonderful has closed physical stores and its main channel is now online, the logical thing would have been to make estimates close to the results of the years prior to the pandemic, when that was its model. Instead, it presented projections that the court considers hardly credible and based on provisional, unaudited data.

He timing. Nine months have passed since the appeal to the Supreme Court until the bankruptcy proceedings. Nine months between pointing out a competitor and admitting the internal problem. It is common in companies in crisis: to outsource, to look for blame outside (unfair competition, plagiarism) when the problem comes from within (strategy, adaptation, business model).

Mr. Wonderful has come this far by a deadly trident:

1. bet on him retail physical just before the pandemic, opening more than 50 stores that coincided with COVID, in addition to investing too much in premium areas that would not give the expected return.
2. Going into debt without sustainable competitive advantages.
3. Operate in a market where you never had moat.

Mr. Wonderful tried to build his moat about an aesthetic style that he could not legally possess exclusively.

Business Insider public a report in November 2023 in which he provided other keys to this fall, alluding to internal sources:

1. Exhaustion of your core business: The product was copied by other companies and buyers were no longer willing to pay extra for the brand.
2. The online channel was adulterated with too many discounts and offers that generated conflicts with the rest of the sales channels. It went from being the jewel in the crown to being outsourced.
3. Business model with high structural risk: almost half of the income came from school agendas, return rates ranged between 30% and 50%, and there was dependence on the price set by Amazon’s algorithms, which again… represented a multichannel conflict.
4. The logistics crisis of September 2022. It caused serious delays at a critical time for sales (back to school) and eroded the trust of some customers.

They also pointed to a drain on managers motivated by strong discrepancies with the leadership style.

The contrast. Ale-hop has not shown signs of fearing his competition because he knew that they did not compete in the same thing. Grimalt, its founder, saw a simple opportunity: cheerful and cheap products, for impulse purchase, in tourist areas. It didn’t take revolutionary genius, but rather consistent execution over time.

Mr. Wonderful did have a great connection with his audience, much more direct. What Cabal and Aracil created really worked. But it turns out that an emotional connection with a brand doesn’t automatically translate into repeat traffic to a store.

And now what. Bankruptcy does not imply a liquidation scenario. There is room for Mr. Wonderful to negotiate a more credible plan with his creditors and move forward. But no longer with the strength of yesteryear, nor with the argument “they copy us” as a distraction. Now you only have one way: to redefine your proposal in a market where designing “cuqui” is no longer enough.

The “cuqui” war ends where it really matters: in the balance sheet. And there the sentence has already been handed down.

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Featured image | Ale-hop, Mr. Wonderful