{"id":739629,"date":"2025-11-26T05:30:00","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T02:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=739629"},"modified":"2025-11-26T05:30:00","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T02:30:00","slug":"brazils-farm-rio-is-taking-on-latin-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=739629","title":{"rendered":"Brazil\u2019s Farm Rio Is Taking on Latin America"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Fashion<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Brazil\u2019s Farm Rio Is Taking on Latin America<\/h1>\n
By <\/span>Madeleine Schulz<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

November 26, 2025<\/p>\n

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    Photo: Farm Rio<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n
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    K\u00e1tia Barros waited 17 years before taking Farm Rio beyond Brazilian borders. After launching the brand in Rio de Janeiro in 1997, the designer\u2019s first priority was expanding across its home country. \u201cWe extended to the whole of Brazil, which is a huge country with different cultures and a lot of diversity,\u201d Barros says. Farm Rio now has 135 stores in Brazil alone, which account for about 35% of the brand\u2019s business.<\/p>\n

    In 2014, global expansion came by way of an Adidas collaboration, followed by a capsule with Anthropologie. Farm Rio then opened its first international store in New York in April 2019, marking the brand\u2019s official expansion into the US, which wound up far exceeding expectations, says CEO Fabio Barreto. So the brand ramped up its US expansion, before looking to Europe (beginning with Paris and London).<\/p>\n

    Now, Farm Rio is heading home, in a sense. \u201cInstead of expanding to Latin America \u2014 which would be natural \u2014 we skipped that step and expanded to the US and Europe,\u201d Barros says. \u201cBut now, we\u2019ve decided to go to Latin America. We are, above all, Latin Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Farm Rio is marking its Latin American expansion with a new campaign, Buena Gente (translating to \u201cgood people\u201d). The campaign features 10 women \u2014 including Barros and Mexican artist Ana Leovy, who has worked with the brand \u2014 from six Latin American countries. \u201cIt\u2019s all about self-confidence, authenticity, and it\u2019s a question of looking to our own culture and beauty values,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s not looking to the trends, it\u2019s not looking to a market that has always come from the Northern Hemisphere to the Southern Hemisphere. It\u2019s celebrating this authenticity that comes not from outside, but from inside.\u201d<\/p>\n

    The campaign offers a lesson into how to approach the region, which is of growing interest for luxury brands. At Vogue Business<\/em>\u2019s recent Global Summit in Dubai, multiple luxury executives, including OTB\u2019s Stefano Rosso and Chalhoub Group CEO Michael Chalhoub, said that Latin America will be a priority in the coming years. Bain also notes that as luxury markets continue to slow globally, Latin America was among the few that remained robust and offered a lifeline in 2025.<\/p>\n

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    Photo: Farm Rio<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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    Farm Rio plans to open a string of stores across the region in the coming months. The brand opened in Mexico earlier this year, with a second opening in early December and a third slated for the second half of 2026. The brand also has launches planned in Argentina and Panama in the near term, with Colombia, Ecuador and Peru on the cards within the next 18 months. \u201c[Colombia] is a country that interests me a lot, because I have an aesthetic match with it,\u201d Barros says. \u201cColombian artistic traditions favor maximalism, emotional vibrancy and narrative-rich patterns. This creates a shared worldview where joy, community and the natural world are central, resulting in a natural aesthetic affinity with Farm Rio\u2019s universe.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Latin America is a peg in the label\u2019s larger growth strategy. Farm Rio has witnessed a solid five years of growth, with revenues in Brazil up 20% year-on-year since 2020 and up 40% globally. The brand grossed $188 million in sales for fiscal 2024. But how is Farm Rio doing it?<\/p>\n

    Getting local<\/strong><\/h2>\n

    The main pillar of Farm Rio\u2019s strategy is to get on the ground.<\/p>\n

    \u201cThis is a long-term project. So we are going to start delicately integrating into the market, contacting the local communities, doing events to meet people in-person over there,\u201d Barros says. \u201cWe are very much concerned, when entering a new market, about not having a foreign point of view. We want to look at the market respectfully, in a smart and sympathetic way.\u201d As a large brand, this can be challenging for its marketing and design departments, she says, but stresses that it remains a top priority.<\/p>\n

    In practice, this involves a multi-tiered approach. Barros offers examples: the Farm Rio team conducts surveys with locals, including wholesalers, retail customers and people on the streets. \u201cWe have this very cool method that is talking to locals, regular people; people of interest \u2014 artists, designers, students. We have this facilitator who talks and listens to them about the geography, the events, the things that are trending \u2014 music, food, bars,\u201d she says. It\u2019s long been part of Farm Rio\u2019s strategy \u2014 even when expanding in Brazil. \u201cAs I said, Brazil is huge. We have several regions that are very diverse.\u201d<\/p>\n

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    Barros also likes to have an in-person presence across the regions into which Farm Rio expands. \u201cOne of my biggest tasks is to travel and be there in the stores, seeing people trying on clothes,\u201d she says. \u201cMy team in general travels a lot, to the US, to Europe, to Brazil \u2014 and now they will to Latin America as well.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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    Whereas US and European expansion has been predominantly online-driven (the US currently has six stores, the UK has three stores and four concessions, and Paris has one store and four concessions; online makes up about half of revenues, with wholesale making up 40% and physical just 10%), Latin America will be propped up by physical spaces. This is because the region doesn\u2019t have the same department store dominance as in the US and Europe, Barreto says. \u201cYou have to rely a lot on your own physical stores,\u201d he adds. \u201cAnd, of course, the economics of the physical stores are easier than in the US, which are much harder because of the price of real estate.\u201d<\/p>\n

    On the backend, for Latin America, Farm Rio is taking a similarly localized approach to Barros\u2019s on-the-ground strategy. Farm Rio has never worked with third parties when expanding in the US or Europe, but for its Latin American expansion, the brand will work with a local operator in each country. (It also partnered with Chalhoub Group to launch in Dubai in 2024.)<\/p>\n

    \u201cEvery country in Latin America is different,\u201d Barreto says. \u201cAlthough we\u2019re one continent, it\u2019s very different how you do business [in each country].\u201d The laws differ starkly, he flags. \u201cTaxes in South America, depending on the country, are pretty complicated, especially in Brazil and Argentina; Chile is a little easier. Colombia is kind of in the middle, like Peru and Ecuador. Every country has a different set of rules on how to do business.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Duties are high, too, he adds. \u201cAmericans are just now understanding what high duties are all about, but we\u2019ve been working with high duties for a long time here.\u201d Mexico was a proof of concept. Here, Farm Rio worked with local operator Sordo Madaleno Group to open its first Mexican outpost, and will stick with them for the two upcoming spaces.<\/p>\n

    Farm Rio\u2019s Latin America expansion doesn\u2019t mean the brand is abandoning its growth play outside of the region. Expansion in the US and Europe remain top priorities, alongside planting Latin American seeds. \u201cWe\u2019re taking an approach into the Western world as a whole,\u201d Barreto says. \u201cThat\u2019s how we\u2019re approaching our expansion in the next couple of years \u2014 before we start venturing into Asia.\u201d<\/p>\n

    More from this author:<\/strong><\/p>\n

    How Aussie-Born Matteau Is Filling the International Woman\u2019s Wardrobe<\/p>\n

    \u201cPeople Will Pay Anything for Longevity\u201d: How Equinox is Building to Last<\/p>\n

    How Basic.Space Cracked \u2018New Luxury\u2019 for the Next Gen<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

    Source URL: http:\/\/vogue.com\/article\/brazils-farm-rio-is-taking-on-latin-america<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Fashion Brazil\u2019s Farm Rio Is Taking on Latin America By Madeleine Schulz November 26, 2025 Photo: Farm Rio K\u00e1tia Barros waited 17 years before taking Farm Rio beyond Brazilian borders. After launching the brand in Rio de Janeiro in 1997, the designer\u2019s first priority was expanding across its home country. \u201cWe extended to the whole […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":739630,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[50],"class_list":["post-739629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-vogue-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/739629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=739629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/739629\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/739630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=739629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=739629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=739629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}