Bobbies opens its own manufacturing workshop in Portugal

French shoe and leather goods brand Bobbies has opened its first in-house manufacturing workshop in Portugal, in the Santa Maria de Feria area south of Porto. This space, completely renovated and re-insulated, is being rented by the brand, and is added to the ten partner workshops that Bobbies already works with.

The goal of the brand founded by Antoine Pauls, Alexis Mogé and Jean-Michel Awad in 2010: to be more flexible in the manufacturing chain and above all to reduce intermediaries in order to become “less dependent on the global economic context,” refers to the brand that, without revealing On its turnover, it claims double-digit growth.

In light of this internal dynamism, Bobbies opened its own logistics platform a few months ago in Marigny-les-Usages, in the Loiret.

Bobbies’ new Portuguese workshop, which employs 45 people, is structured around four areas: model making, hand production (cutting, sewing, assembly and finishing), quality control and supplies and stocks.

An average of 150 pairs are being produced daily, with the aim of increasing the number to 230 pairs for the upcoming fall/winter collection. “Within two or three years, the goal is for this workshop to represent 20 to 30% of our total production,” specifies the brand.

Bobbies has six stores, plus its corners in Printemps de la femme and La Samaritaine, and has 400 distributors in France and abroad. The brand will open a store in Aix-en-Provence in mid-November and another this week in Amsterdam, its second store internationally after London.