Cover Story

Will Travel for Babies

Berenguer's Juan Cerdá, son Richard, and daughter Laura crisscross the globe to give collectors baby dolls to treasure.

By Marianne Clay

Juan Cerdá, son Richard, and daughter Laura log thousands of air miles each year, flying between Berenguer's headquarters for the American market in Miami, the factories they use in China, and their headquarters for the European market in Spain. Theirs is a global business, so they crisscross the globe a lot. To talk to Juan about his company, Dolls by Berenguer, we caught him on a stopover in Hong Kong.

"Our company has a long history, over 50 years of doll craftsmanship and design," Juan explains before his meetings in Hong Kong begin. "From the early 1950s until the original company Berjusa dissolved in 1992, the Berenguer family had been sculpting and producing Berjusa dolls from their hometown of Castalla, Spain, for 40 years." Though Berjusa is no longer producing dolls, many links remain between the original company and Juan's Dolls by Berenguer.

Some of the doll parts, such as the eyes, are still made in Spain and are the same kind of eyes once used in the making of Berjusa dolls. The fragrance used to scent the vinyl for the dolls comes from Germany, and the very same fragrance scented the Berjusa dolls. Salvador Berenguer, whose father founded Berjusa, has worked as the head designer for Dolls by Berenguer since Juan founded his doll company in 1993. Salvador finds the distinctive facial expressions for his dolls, just like he always has, in the faces of his children and now his grandchildren. And, just as the original Berjusa dolls celebrated early childhood and innocence, Dolls by Berenguer offers dolls capturing the innocence and expressions of the very young, particularly babies.

"The company name changed, its organization changed," says Juan, "but the superior quality and the emphasis on realistic expression has remained." Juan became involved in the doll world in about 1975 when he first came to the U.S. from his native Spain. His children were born in Spain, too. "Then, in 1982, I came to the U.S. with the Berval Group to introduce a line of products from Spanish factories, and this line of products included the Berjusa dolls."

When the Berval Group dissolved in the early 1990s, Juan looked for a new opportunity and found it in the doll company he had been representing. He gradually moved doll production from Spain to China. "While China was a new environment for us, it worked out really well. Today we are in both doll markets, the collectible market and the mass-market play dolls. And we are in every major retail outlet. But what has never changed is our attention to the key issues in making our dolls — quality and design."

His son, Richard, who is company president, now runs the U.S. operation, and Laura handles marketing and product development. "We all do a lot of listening to our customers. Richard talks to many customers, and we pay close attention to what they tell us. We also periodically visit Salvador, our head designer, and our sculptors in Spain and hear what they have to tell us." But the company's strength is, as it is fully aware, its babies.

"We have found ways to capture expressions so our babies have so many different faces," Juan explains. "Some companies offer a limited amount of dolls in many different outfits, while we offer many dolls with many different facial expressions. We have a very large amount of dolls, in the hundreds, and each year we add about 35 to 40 dolls. So I don't know how many in total, but it's a lot." Dolls by Berenguer, Inc., offers its dolls within two distinct collections, and within each collection are four to five separate lines. The Special Edition Collection, which is geared to adult collectors, includes four separate lines: La Baby Special Edition; Angel Face, 9-1/2-inch baby dolls with hand-rooted hair; Precious Bundles by Berenguer, the company's most realistic soft-body baby doll with hand-rooted mohair strands; and La Newborn Expressions. The second collection, the Specialty Play Doll Collection, is aimed toward children and has expanded to include five different lines: La Baby; Lots to Cuddle Babies; the full-size La Newborn; the 9-1/2-inch La Newborn Minis; and the 20-inch Toddler Friends. Many of these baby dolls find their way to reborning artists, who transform them into one-of-a kinds. (See the story on reborning on page 48.)

"I love two things about making dolls," Juan says. "When we go to Spain or the designer comes to us in Miami and we see for the first time the new designs, I love seeing the new dolls. That's a great feeling; where there was nothing, we see a creation that is really good. And I love presenting the new dolls to the customers and seeing how much they love them." With that passion to fuel them, the Cerdá family travels the world for babies.