At the age
of 14 you entered the world of work, giving up your studies and leaving the
seminary. At 24 you were called up to fight in the Portuguese Colonial War. You
were stationed near Kyaia, Angola. Is that where the name of the Kyaia group
comes from?
At the
time, I was posted with the platoon to Kyaia and that’s where the name came
from, yes. On those nights when we had nothing at all to do, we imagined what
we would do in the future. I would think: «I want to make a shoe factory». That was the only thing I could see in my life.
Back in
Portugal, you went back to work. You joined the April 25th Revolution and
entered political life as a candidate for the PCP. Did you quickly realise that
this was not your vocation?
25th
of April. Those were glorious times and many sleepless nights. I was a
candidate for the PCP party in the first elections, yes. My first party was the
Socialist Party but, at the time, I went to the PS headquarters and found them
closed. I thought: «They not
interested in the Revolution». Soon
afterwards, I went down the street and noticed that the headquarters of the PCP
was open. And that was that. So, I volunteered to work on the campaign and that’s
how I got involved in political life. After that campaign, I needed to earn
money and, well, that was the end of my political career. I was there for a
year. I began to understand how that world worked and I said to myself: «This is not for me after all.» I had already been a boy scout and I
realised that this was even worse.
Without being
able to speak English, you have visited half the world, you sell to many
countries and you are one of the largest Portuguese footwear manufacturers. He
created Kyaia in 1984 and the Fly London brand came about ten years later. Do
you consider yourself a visionary?
No. I
consider myself an ordinary man, but one who always wants to move up in life. To
raise the bar, you have to have strength and willpower, otherwise it's
impossible.
How many
companies does the group have?
It is made
up of about twelve companies, in various areas. We manufacture shoes in
Guimarães, where the head office is located, and in Paredes de Coura. Then
there are the shops. At one point there were 80 of them, today around 15. Half
a dozen years ago I took the decision to start closing down shops, as it is a
very loss-making business. And so, the number of shops will come to a halt
here.
And how
many people do you employ at the moment?
Around 400
workers. I don’t have an exact number because it’s all very volatile. Today
they’re here, tomorrow they’re gone.
We’re
talking about an annual turnover in sales of...
We’ve had
some changes. 2014 and 2015 were Kyaia’s high points, with annual sales of 64
to 65 million Euros. However, sales started to slow down, and that’s what led
me, between 2021 and 2022, to release a partner who had worked with me since he
was 15. He was in charge of the commercial part of the group and, as this was
what took the company into decline, I spoke to him. I told him: «This is not what I hired you for, I
gave you a stake, but it wasn’t so that we could become a small group. This is
heading towards becoming the smallest footwear group in Portugal. I’ll find
people to replace you and you go on with your life. » And, well, that’s what happened.
«We are [...] trying to conquer the domestic market»
What is your export volume? And what is your largest
market?
At the moment, we still have between 85% and 95%
export volume. We are also trying to conquer the domestic market, where at one
point we had a turnover of three million Euros. With the overall decrease in
the group’s turnover, we are around the one million mark.
The largest market is, and always has been, the
English market, which rivals the American and Canadian markets. One year it’s
better in one; another year it’s better in another, and so on. These are
markets that dominate Kyaia’s progression. At the moment, we sell to 45-50
countries, but in the past, we have had as many as 60 countries. Our production
capacity is also limited, we have to be realistic, because the lack of manpower
significantly affects production. For example, if we didn’t have a group of 21
Venezuelans working in Paredes de Coura, we would have a factory with
production problems.
How has inflation affected the business?
It has rendered the dialogue between the group and its
customers difficult. They think our product is expensive. We think it’s cheap.
The truth is that either we earn enough to pay our workers, or it’s not worth
having the factory open. Then, more understanding or less understanding
customers come along. We don’t want to exploit anyone. I'm not in favour of
increasing production, rather of improving it. We have to grow, not by
increasing production, but by adding value. We don’t pollute the world that
much, nor do we tire our workers out that much, and we end up adding more value
to the product. That is why we are already present in areas such as artificial
intelligence, the metaverse...
Is internationalisation achieved through being present
at trade fairs and in the digital world?
The best way is through trade fairs. We are present at
all of them, including Milan. The philosophy is also no longer the same. At the
moment, we are focusing on smaller fairs, because they are more economical. On the
other hand, digital is very nice, but it is fundamental that there is a
personal connection. In 2018/2019, the group launched the Overcube
online sales platform, for the Portuguese footwear industry. The idea was to
create a small Amazon in Portugal, which represented the national
footwear industry in the world. I started the project with around 30 IT people,
today there are four left. Why? There was the pandemic, the war and the
economic crisis. Nobody wanted to support the project either, neither the industry,
which considered it too modern, nor the government itself, which looked at it
as if it were looking at a cow in the middle of a corn field. The circumstances
of the Portuguese business world also left me alone. I invested and when I
reached three million, I stopped.
How do you promote critical thinking, innovation and
sustainability in your organisation?
Well, we are not the critics, our customers are. They
are the ones doing the buying. We always try to respect their wishes and needs.
With regard to sustainability, we are present in some industry projects for
sustainability. In the field of innovation, we have made serious investments in
the metaverse. Why? The customers who, in 1994, used to queue up to buy our
product, are now more than 30/40 years old. So, they have had enough. So, we
need to find new customers. Commerce is facing a huge change. Here, in
Portugal, we had shoe shop clients who made a lot of money, but their children
wanted to pursue other areas, and so those customers almost no longer exist. I
can’t sell shoes if there are hardly any shoe shops, so the idea was to put
ourselves into the metaverse, to attract kids who are now 10/12 years old. By
convincing them to play our games, we fix them to the brand, so that in 20 years’
time they will be attached to Fly London. It’s an investment. Maybe in a few
years they will start buying our product.
How does the national footwear industry present itself
to the world?
Like all industries, it has to fight for its survival.
And hard. Technically, the national footwear industry is well developed, it
just doesn’t have the added value of the brand. For example, if we go to
Felgueiras, we can see many industries paralysed, because they only work
essentially for the major brands, which by the way are in crisis. We, Kyaia, as
we have a great deal of autonomy (around 70%), are working at full capacity. In
fact, we’re going on holiday now. So, today, the industry is well prepared, the
problem is that the added value of the brand does not exist. The national
industry has no brands.
Do you
usually wear Fly London shoes?
You have to
like your girlfriend to go out with her (he laughs)! Yes, I wear Fly
London shoes.
«I can’t sell shoes if there are hardly any shoe shops»