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Twenty years after two enterprising Frenchmen travelled to Brazil to meet organic cotton producers and wild rubber tappers on a quest to launch their own specialist trainer brand, Veja is on the verge of a new trajectory.
From 22 February, Veja’s European customers will be able to buy exclusive colourways of the brand’s bestselling V-90 style produced in a new location: a factory in Portugal. The creation of a European supply chain, specifically to serve the European market, marks the first time Veja products have been made outside of Brazil.
Veja’s new exclusive colourways.Photo: Courtesy of Veja
“Between 2015 and today, we’ve reached a saturation point in our Brazilian factories,” says Veja co-founder Sébastien Kopp, who started the brand with childhood friend François-Ghislain Morillion. “We are also continuously growing, so it was natural to look for a new production hub, [and] we quickly came up with the idea of ‘made in Europe, sold in Europe’ — producing pairs in Europe, and selling them in Europe only.”
The project echoes moves to diversify supply chains via nearshoring across all levels of the footwear and apparel sector. These include Nordstrom moving private label volume production to Guatemala, Benetton shifting a proportion of its manufacturing away from China to Turkey, Serbia and Egypt, and Mango putting more weight behind its proximity supply chain in Turkey and Morocco. Per McKinsey, nearly two-thirds of fashion executives are considering creating new manufacturing hubs dedicated to serving US and European demand.
For Veja, the idea of manufacturing in Portugal (first floated in 2020) came quickly enough, but the process of bringing it into reality has been “very long”, notes Kopp. A shared language with Brazil and its geographical location made Portugal a natural choice, as well as its centuries-old shoemaking expertise. Its footwear industry employs 40,000 and makes for the likes of Birkenstock, Ganni and Timberland. In 2022, exports from the Portuguese footwear industry topped €2 billion in value, a record figure that surged 20 per cent on the previous year, according to the Portuguese Footwear, Components and Leather Goods Manufacturers’ Association (APICCAPS).