Classic Portuguese toiletries brand celebrates centenary

Posted 18 Julho, 2018

Classic Portuguese toiletries brand Ach Brito which sells in 50 countries is celebrating its centenary this month.

Founded in Porto in 2018, the brand which sells in Liberty’s of London and Galeries LaFayette in Paris has been in the same family – De Brito – for four generations and today has a turnover of €8 million.

The brand celebrated its centenary in Lisbon with a recreation of a 1920s marketing campaign in a Porto park with a classic truck piled high with its original best-selling Patti soaps handed out to passers-by by a man on stilts.

The heir of the original founder Achilles de Brito said he felt proud and bound to safeguard the company’s legacy in the future. “It’s a big responsibility and we went through difficult times in the 1980s when we were up against stiff competition from foreign brands” says the founder’s great-grandson Aquiles de Brito

“I feel very emotional. I was never trained to take the reins of the family business because my father died when he was just 39 and I was only 10 and to see what the brand has become today makes me feel very proud” says Aquiles de Brito.

Ach.Brito is the oldest soap manufacturer in Portugal. It has officially been in operation since 20 July 1918. The company has survived two world wars, the financial crises of 1929 and 2008, the end of the monarchy and the institution of the Portuguese Republic, a 50-year dictatorship, the April Revolution, Portugal’s entry into the European Economic Community (EEC) and European Union (EU).

Today, the company employs over 100 people and is behind the luxury best-selling brand Claus Porto, which sells in the best stores in the world.

To celebrate the centenary, Ach Brito has launched seven special editions of its classic brands: Lavender Eau de Cologne, Centenary Soap, Patti Luxury Bath Soap and Commemorative Boxes of Soap Editions.

In 2015 the family sold its majority shareholding to Menlo Capital headed by Ricardo Cunha Vaz to help fund Claus Porto’s international expansion strategy.