EXCLUSIVE: Farm Rio’s Paris Store Sets Stage for Retail Acceleration, Further Growth

PARIS — Brazilian label Farm Rio is in the starting blocks for an expansion sprint.

And its starting block is Paris, where it has opened a 1,200-square-foot store on Rue Vieille du Temple in the Marais.

For Fabio Barreto, chief executive officer of Farm Rio Global, the brand’s international operation branch, successive experiences starting in 2021 in the French capital’s key department stores — Le Bon Marché, Printemps, La Samaritaine and most recently Galeries Lafayette — were a warm-up.

“Since that moment, we were ready to increase our footprint,” said the executive, who credited the warm reception to Farm Rio to a shared love for “joie de vivre” between Brazil and France.

For its Paris address, Barreto said the Marais offered the best match for Farm Rio’s upper contemporary positioning. Its neighbors include Axel Arigato, Ganni and Sézane, with which the Brazilian brand collaborated last year on a co-branded capsule.

Designed by the brand’s architectural team and Brazilian architect Camila Urbanetto, the store will feature a hand-painted mural by British artist Daniel Bland, depicting animals from Brazil’s Atlantic coastal forest, as well as furniture crafted by artisans from the country’s southern Ilha do Ferro area.

“Every store is a little different from the others but they all have the same objective of bringing a lot of Brazilian culture to the environment [where they’re implanted],” Barreto said. “We are a Brazilian brand that wants to showcase Brazilian creativity, Brazilian culture, Brazilian talents.”

That said, he noted that collaborations with local brands, such as the one with Sézane, were a possibility as they fostered meaningful creative ties with its markets. The brand also has long-standing collaborations with Adidas and Havaianas, both spanning well over a decade.

The Paris store will carry the brand’s international offering, which focuses on women’s styles and a handful of accessories. An exclusive print, dubbed “Tropical, Mon Amour,” has been developed specially.

The opening dovetails with an acceleration for Farm Rio Global, the division put in place in 2019 to support the international expansion of the brand founded in 1997 by Katia Barros and Marcello Bastos in Rio de Janeiro.

After navigating the pandemic years and stretching its legs with a clutch of openings, the brand is ready to put pedal to the metal.

By the end of 2023, sales outside Brazil reached 117 million euros, out of a total of 385 million euros. More than half of that figure came from e-commerce, while wholesale accounts for 45 percent of the business.

The remaining 5 percent was generated by the brand’s first three stores, in New York’s SoHo, L.A.’s Venice Beach, and the Aventura Mall address in Florida. A store in London opened in the final days of December 2023.

With growth outside Brazil outpacing its domestic pace by a wide margin, the executive said Farm Rio Global would take a larger share than its Brazilian operations within three to five years.

While the current focus for Farm Rio is its U.S. and Europe expansion, the wheels of its next moves are already in motion. Before Paris, a second store opened on Los Angeles’ Melrose Avenue.

Openings in Brooklyn; Washington, D.C.; and Dallas are slated for this year, with second locations for New York City and London also planned.

“Those global cities will be the ones that showcase and explain the brand,” Barreto said.

Barreto said the plan for the coming years was to open around 10 stores a year, with a growth expectation of between 25 and 30 percent a year in general.

While he wouldn’t share precise projections for the Paris store, the executive said the brand wanted to be above 2 million euros a year in sales.

But it will also target cities such as Saint-Tropez. After a pop-up this summer and collaborating with Parisian eatery Loulou’s outpost in Ramatuelle, the brand is looking at opening a store there.

Meanwhile, franchises are also bulking up the number of Farm Rio retail points, with Mykonos, Greece, and the reopening of its Bodrum, Turkey, door.

And the label is already eyeing the Middle East as its next engine for growth, after inking a deal with the Chalhoub Group for the region. A first store in Dubai is slated to open in early July, in Mall of the Emirates.

Barreto, who stepped up as CEO of the brand in 2018 after leading its parent group’s financial and strategic planning, was also behind a months-long test on Tmall in 2019. Focus on Asia is in its sights for 2027, the executive said.

While menswear and children’s clothes will be offering sparingly on the international market as capsules for now, another area for growth may be footwear and accessories, owing to its parent company Grupo Soma’s recent merger with leather goods specialist Arezzo Group.

For now, bags and accessories represent around five and 10 percent of Farm Rio’s business. “We’re very excited to bring that to our stores because looking at our peers, they have at least 30 percent of their business coming from bags and accessories,” Barreto said.