Two Portuguese companies made the same move within weeks of each other.
Arcopedico, the comfort-footwear maker, set up its own US company, Arcopedico USA LLC, to run its American operation directly. [1] WYgroup, a Lisbon group marking 25 years, eight companies and more than 350 people, opened WYgroup USA and put Michael Mish, a 20-year veteran of the sector, in charge of it. [2]
Neither announced it as a trend. Read together, it looks like one.
The usual script for a European company entering the US is well known: find a distributor, hand over the market, and wait for a partner to learn the product. It works often enough that most companies never question it. But a growing number of Portuguese companies are looking at the same market and choosing the harder version: their own entity, their own hire, their own name on the door.
What going direct actually buys is not a mystery. The maker keeps the customer relationship instead of borrowing it. Pricing, positioning and pace stop being negotiations with a middleman. Every conversation with a buyer teaches the company something it gets to keep.
What it costs is equally plain. A US entity, a payroll, product compliance, liability, inventory risk, and the patience to build accounts one at a time. None of that is cheap, and none of it is fast. A distributor's warehouse, credit terms and account list exist for a reason, and for many companies the distributor is still the right answer.
The real question is narrower than it looks. It is not "direct or distributor". It is: on each deal, what does the partner bring that you cannot build or buy yourself - and what do you hand over in return? Companies that answer that honestly tend to find the decision makes itself. Some lines, some channels and some price points belong with a partner. Others were only ever rented because no one had run the numbers.
There is a reason this is happening now, and it is not bravado. The US is the market where European consumer brands most often find out whether their product travels. When the answer is yes, the economics change. A market that was worth a distributor's margin at ten accounts looks different at a hundred. The companies going direct are the ones whose products already proved they could sell. They are not gambling on the market. They are collecting on it.
None of this makes distributors obsolete. The good ones bring accounts, logistics and local knowledge that a new arrival cannot buy overnight. But it does reprice what a distributor has to be. A partner who moves product is worth their margin. A partner who merely holds the relationship is charging rent on something the maker can own.
That is the shift worth watching. The strongest Portuguese products are no longer asking for permission to be in the US market. They are deciding what kind of presence the market has earned.
Sources
- 1. Arcopedico USA, company site
- 2. WYgroup, 25th anniversary and US opening announcement, 9 October 2026
Dusk over Lisbon, looking toward the 25 de Abril bridge. Photo: thorl5 / Pexels.