BARCELONA, Spain — "There are certain areas of the world where we're present that the forecast for the next 12 months is not very optimistic," concedes Daniel López, who, in less than a decade, rose from Mango's legal management team to the rank of vice-chairman.

Citing the ripple effect of terrorist activity and other forms of geopolitical instability in markets such as the Middle East, Russia and the CIS countries, López acknowledges that there will be challenges facing the Spanish fast fashion brand in 2017.

“Number one [is] uncertainty and volatility linked to currency exchanges... like the rouble and the dollar [and] there are all these Brexit consequences that everyone is still discounting but we have still yet to see over a 12-month period,” says López, who has overall responsibility for the areas of retail, franchise management and global expansion.

Given how exposed Mango is across international markets, López admits that it will not be easy to mitigate uncertainty and maintain growth. The company currently operates over 2,200 own-brand stores in 109 countries around the world. Approximately 80 percent of brand turnover corresponded to markets outside Spain in 2015.

Yet López is confident that there are ways for Mango to expand next year despite the volatile climate in some territories. “We are going to be cautious depending on the market but we are not going to decelerate our expansion plans,” he says.

We have a commitment to build this one-to-one relationship with the consumer irrespective of the macroeconomic situation.

“Our focus right now is to be more capillary in markets that account for the biggest percentage of our turnover, so this is going to be mainly big markets in Europe [and] Russia now that the situation seems to be a little bit more stable. This means also growing in the Middle East.”

Rather than conquering entirely new emerging markets, López will boost the company’s presence by penetrating more deeply in substantial but still underserved cities where the brand has already proven itself.

“We’re going to keep more or less the same number of stores [but] work towards transforming into a network of stores where we can establish a more clear relationship with our customers rather than the transactional type of stores that we used to have.”

“We come from a footprint of stores that has an average of 300 square metres [so] what we’ve been doing since 2013 is to change this footprint into... the region of 800 square metres on average — including the majority of the womenswear, plus kidswear, plus menswear. This is a process... which is still far from being finished, so we have this idea of growing another 100,000 square metres... in 2017.”

By bringing a greater assortment of merchandise and a wider selection of ranges into larger format megastores, López aims to expose consumers to a more comprehensive vision of the brand universe and thereby create a deeper connection. He plans to enhance the relationship further by improving the localisation of the offering and increasing speed-to-market. To this end, the company has completed a colossal new logistics centre in Lliçà d’Amunt, outside Barcelona.

“Since our [expansion] project is medium to long-term... we have a commitment to build this one-to-one relationship with the consumer irrespective of the macro-economic situation [in 2017],” he says.

The State of Fashion 2017 is The Business of Fashion and McKinsey & Company's in-depth report on the global fashion industry in 2017, focusing on the themes, issues and opportunities impacting the sector and its performance.