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. “[Colombia] is a country that interests me a lot, because I have an aesthetic match with it,” Barros says. “Colombian 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’s universe.”
Latin America is a peg in the label’s 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?
Getting local
The main pillar of Farm Rio’s strategy is to get on the ground.
“This 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,” Barros says. “We 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.” As a large brand, this can be challenging for its marketing and design departments, she says, but stresses that it remains a top priority.
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. “We have this very cool method that is talking to locals, regular people; people of interest — artists, designers, students. We have this facilitator who talks and listens to them about the geography, the events, the things that are trending — music, food, bars,” she says. It’s long been part of Farm Rio’s strategy — even when expanding in Brazil. “As I said, Brazil is huge. We have several regions that are very diverse.”
Photo: Farm Rio
Photo: Farm Rio
Barros also likes to have an in-person presence across the regions into which Farm Rio expands. “One of my biggest tasks is to travel and be there in the stores, seeing people trying on clothes,” she says. “My team in general travels a lot, to the US, to Europe, to Brazil — and now they will to Latin America as well.”
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