Alexander “Sacha” Hagin: a life in textiles.
Refugee, soldier, chemical engineer, mill manager and international consultant — Sacha Hagin founded Rovetex and shaped the way it still works today.
Escape and survival (1925–1945)
Sacha Hagin was born on 2 October 1925 in Sisak, Yugoslavia. As a boy he refused to follow the Nazis’ orders and fled with his parents through Zagreb, Belgrade and Zagreb again to Split, then in Italian-controlled Dalmatia. Warned by the Italian police chief that their lives were in danger, the family escaped with other refugees to Trieste on a ship attacked by Allied fighter planes.
He spent a year in Italy, helped by local people and police who warned the refugees when the situation became too dangerous, moving between Modena, Serramazzoni, Sondrio and Tirano. Officers of the Italian Guardia di Finanza then helped his group cross the Alps into Switzerland, where he lived between refugee camps, attended a boarding school in Lausanne and completed high school in Lugano.
Israel and the Technion (1945–1952)
When the war ended in 1945, he took the first available ship to Palestine. He fought as an infantry soldier in Israel’s War of Independence in 1948 and worked his way through the Technion, graduating as a chemical engineer in 1952.
A textile pioneer
Sacha began his career as a chemical engineer at Ata, where he mastered the dyeing and finishing of corduroy, including a year of training in Italy. In 1960 he became the first head of dyeing and finishing at Kitan Dimona, a new vertical textile mill in the Negev built with Gherzi consultants and European and American technology. There he introduced terry-towel printing, and the mill’s printed beach towels were sold worldwide.
He then became CEO of Texfin in Durban, South Africa, part of the Frame group and at the time one of the largest dyeing and finishing mills in the world, with more than a thousand employees running around the clock. The mill grew under his management, helped by his international network of experts and technology.
Consultant and founder of Rovetex
After five years in South Africa he returned to Israel with his wife and two children and, at 45, began an international career in textile technology and management consulting. He became a vice president of Werner International, serving clients in Greece, Türkiye, Italy and Germany, and spent three years on the boards of two Italian corporations.
He then founded Rovetex, a textile management consultancy serving companies worldwide in management, technology and start-ups across the whole supply chain, from fibre to garment. Many companies improved their operations through his own work and his team’s. In 1987, with partners in Milan, he also started one of the first packaged management-software products for the textile industry, beginning with costing — which he saw as one of the biggest opportunities to improve the industry’s performance.
The man
His journey explains why he spoke seven languages fluently: Croatian, German and Yiddish from childhood, Italian learned during his escape, French at boarding school, then Hebrew and English. From his early teens he was independent, strong-willed and optimistic, and he fought — literally and figuratively — for his goals and beliefs.
Colleagues remember him as soft-spoken and optimistic, a leader who created trust and spread professionalism to everyone around him. His standard still guides Rovetex: accept only work that can be brought to a successful conclusion.
Sacha Hagin died at home on 31 March 2021, next to his wife Yael, at the age of 95 — lucid and optimistic to the end, and still talking about the future of Rovetex and of the world. He is remembered by his children Vered and Ronnie, his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and the many partners, clients and colleagues who learned from him.