Portugal’s talents are many – its time in the spotlight overdue

Lisbon: Bom dia from Zürich, where the sun is shining, the white port is flowing and our HQ on Dufourstrasse is bustling with visitors from across town, Switzerland and around the world. Off the back of our Portuguese market in London, some of the country’s most interesting craftspeople and brands have set up their stalls to not only dispense olive oil, woven rugs, ceramics, jewellery and garments but also to tell the contemporary story of “Made in Portugal”.

To kick things off on Friday eve we were joined by Portugal’s ambassadors to Switzerland and the UN mission in Geneva, along with the Swiss director for Visit Portugal. After a brief discussion about the Iberian nation’s role in the world, its manufacturing dynamism and a few travel tips, the conversation shifted, as it often does, to why a country that makes everything from cars to ships and drones to sweatshirts has not yet managed to produce a global retail powerhouse or fashion brand? How could it be that a country that manufactures so many implements for the Swiss-watch industry (not to mention the provision of manpower to staff factories up and down the Jura) has not managed to produce its own homegrown watch brand? Unsurprisingly, the answers were varied. So too the solutions for getting Portuguese brands on more shelves and spinning in showrooms across the globe.

“We’re makers, not marketers,” suggested a Portuguese Monocle subscriber based in Zürich. “That’s the problem. We’re solid Catholics but we never inherited any of the brand flair of the Vatican.” After a few more glasses of white from the Algarve I overheard a small group of Portuguese from Geneva suggesting that bureaucracy and taxes stifle entrepreneurship, while a diplomat said that there’s too much focus on the making and not enough on the power and margins that come with intellectual property.

If you pick up the June issue of Monocle, you’ll encounter a new Portuguese player who just might be on the runway (literally) to becoming a global brand in the defence-and-security space. While Tekever didn’t take a stand at our market (wouldn’t have been a bad idea as we had enough military types in attendance), they are fast making a name as the drone supplier of choice to forces around the world – while proving that ingenuity mixed with some PR clout can not only raise a brand’s profile but also create a beacon to inspire other upstarts across Portugal. Should you not be in the market for high-altitude surveillance over the Atlantic, then you might want to check out a few of the following brands for your larder, beach tote, wardrobe or dining table. There’ll be much more from Portugal over the coming weeks and months as new issues land on newsstands, stories hit screens and interviews go out on Monocle Radio. Obrigado.