WestMister
The irreverent socks with a 100% Portuguese quality
United States of America, Canada, Mexico, Spain, France, Switzerland and Belgium are some of the countries to where they sell.
The main ambition of its founders, Luís Campos and Vanessa Marques, is to make Westmister a world-wide known reference.

How did the idea come about?
WestMister came about in 2016. It was an old dream, combined with the need to promote a premium product with a national identity,a high-quality product with a bold design and ideal for the modern and sophisticated man. My family has been involved in the production of socks for more than 30 years, so it was natural for this project to come into being.

How long did it take for the initial idea to become a business?
When I thought and conceived this project together with Vanessa Marques – who is also in charge of WestMister but only working part-time when she is not busy with her other profession, teaching – we had the opportunity to present our project to the incubator MadeIn Famalicão (of the Municipality of Vila Nova de Familacão), as Vanessa’s family are also linked to the textiles industry. From here on, all the collaboration has been extraordinary, and we are now working with an incubator partnered with MadeIn Famalicão.
As we wanted to be a premium brand, the next step was to imagine the type of machinery and raw material we were going to use. As we had the know-how and some years of experience in this area, the process was simple.
Subsequently, we looked for services in the area of design for the image we intended to use, and then in the area of product design.


What’s your strategy?
As I said before, WestMister was born from the need to promote a product with national identity, located in the mid-high market. After a commercial presentation at a national level with a positive reception, we are now focusing on internationalization, because that is the main objective of the brand.

How important are online sales?
In 2018, online sales were only at 10% and retail sales at 90%. At the moment we don’t focus much on online sales. We first want to make the product known and rely on digital marketing more strongly in the long term.
Which countries do you sell to?
The United States of America, Canada, Mexico, Portugal, Spain, France, Switzerland, Belgium, the UK, Holland, Germany and Romania.
