Havaianas has opened a 149-square-metre temporary store at 33 avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris, featuring an exotic décor characterised by a giant screen streaming live clips from Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana beach, and a sculpture of the sun made with 478 flip flops. The store will remain open until August 31, and is designed to transport its visitors to Rio and its beaches, enabling the Brazilian footwear brand to tap the Paris Olympics for a visibility boost.
 

Havaianas, founded in 1962, commissioned Studio Xag, a B Corp-certified company, with designing sustainable interiors for the store. A special room is dedicated to the brand’s collaborations and capsule collections, offering customers an immersive experience through sounds, lights and textures. Among the items on display in the room, the four models of the Havaianas x Dolce & Gabbana collaboration, and the Havaianas x Farm Rio collection.
 
“Havaianas is currently present in over 100 countries. But it’s worth underlining that, although we have a global presence, certain countries are strategic for us, as is the case for France. We cannot divulge the exact volume of our sales in France, but the country is one of our top markets in Europe, and has been growing steadily since we first entered it,” said Harm van de Camp, who was named president of Alpargatas Europe last November. 

In France, Havaianas is distributed via 38 monobrand stores – the one in rue de Rennes in Paris has recently been renovated – and thousands of multibrand retailers. The brand is owned by Brazilian group Alpargatas, and has sold over 5 billion pairs of flip flops since 1962. It currently operates 992 monobrand stores worldwide, in addition to a widespread network of multibrand retailers.
 
“The footwear market, and the fashion industry as a whole, are changing extremely rapidly. Brands need to be well ahead of the game in order to anticipate these changes. In recent years, we have been able to anticipate several new trends, for example the digital transformation fuelled by the pandemic, the growing demand for personalisation, and the importance of collaborations,” said van de Camp.