Carmo Jewelry is preparing to open in Paris 2nd international store

ANDm statements to Lusa, the director of ‘Marketing’ and Cultural Communication of the Portuguese group said that this year “the focus is on the two international openings of the Carmo Jewelry”, and the first was already carried out in July, in Times Square [New York], and the second will be “in the coming months”, in Paris.

“ For the next year and for the following, everything is possible ", said Sonia Santiago.

“ We will continue to pay attention to the opportunities that arise and we will advance whenever we understand that they make sense to the group and to our brands, maintaining the ambition that has guided us: to bring portugality to the world with elevation ", needed.

The new store in Times Square of the Carmo Jewelry – a brand founded in 1924 in Carmo Street, Lisbon, and which began to integrate The Value of Time in 2021 – is the second commercial space of the group in that famous New York square, after the opening, three years ago, of the iconic “The Fantastic World of the Portuguese Sardine” in 2023.

The head of the group advanced to Lusa that the investment in the Carmo Jewelry in New York “contains a 10-year contract of EUR 6 million”, and in the next openings “investments will be adjusted to the size, location and characteristics of each project”.

In the current Time Value strategy, preserves and filigree are the two concepts “with more solid characteristics to gain international relevance”, so they are not on the table “concrete plans to internationalize other brands”.

Still, the group ensures that everything is open, keeping “attention to opportunities” and available to advance “if the market, the moment and the project arise”.

“ Among the geographies that we follow with particular interest are Asia and South America, where we believe that some of our concepts may find room to affirm themselves”, Sónia Santiago advanced.

In relation to the national market, O Valor do Tempo says that it has not currently foreseen an expansion of the network: “We are, rather, in a phase of consolidation and optimization of our presence, evaluating very carefully each location,” he said, needing that this means “opening one or another store on time” in places considered strategic and, at the same time, the eventual abandonment of locations that stop “making sense” for the concepts of the brand.

“ The goal is not to grow in number of stores, but to ensure that we are in the right places and that each space adds value to the group as a whole”, emphasizes.

After having invoiced EUR 50 million in 2025, the group does not project – at least publicly – the turnover for this year and for 2027, referring only that in Portugal it grows “at the natural pace of the Portuguese economy” and that it is the strategic investments underway in the United States that “can change the scale” and “turn arithmetic growth into geometric growth”.

“Portugal is a market where we grow essentially arithmetic. In the United States, by its size, we believe we are able to grow geometrically. It is this change of scale that makes this market so important to us,” explains the marketing director.

While stressing that stores abroad “are, above all, a matter of positioning and not weight in global billing”, O Valuo do Tempo states that, “naturally, business must be economically viable and, at this stage, operations in New York already meet this first goal of self-sufficiency.”.

This is despite “being in one of the most demanding locations in the world, particularly with regard to the cost of rents”.

Achieved by self-sufficiency, the group says to begin now “true opportunity”, assuming that “ambitiousness is another”: “To affirm Portuguese brands and products with the dignity and value with which they should always have been looked at, knowing how to present them to the world with the elevation necessary to give them the place they deserve”.

“ We want to demonstrate that what is Portuguese can occupy the best places, in the most demanding and competitive cities in the world, not even though it is Portuguese, but precisely because it is Portuguese”, he stresses.

Among the various brands of O Valor do Tempo, the highlight goes to The Fantastic World of the Portuguese Sardinha, right away by the number of stores it represents, followed by the Portuguese House of the Pastel de Bacalhau, the Museum of Beer and A Brasileira do Chiado, and then the other brands.

The group ensures that it will continue to bet on its various insignia, but stresses that its “successful measure is not an unmeasured ambition of billing”, but “to be able to make them grow without removing their identity, relevance or positioning”.

Owner of 15 brands and a half hundred stores in almost ten and a half cities, the group invested 18 million euros last year in the recovery of a set of buildings on Flores Street, in Porto, which turned into a cultural block where it proposes “to give stage to artisans, their hands and what they create”.

There are represented all traditional Portuguese arts currently certified and a weekly cultural agenda of events, exhibitions, demonstrations or conversations is developed, focused on “give visibility to artisans and their arts and bring them closer to the public”.

In addition to the certified arts, there also coexist other crafts and craft techniques transmitted over generations that The Value of Time wants to value and continue through the concept “Sons of the Office”, dedicated to a new generation of creators who “part of the tradition to reinvent it, introducing innovation and contemporaneity without losing its matrix”.

“The project of Rua das Flores is that of an incubator of continuity of Portuguese arts and crafts. Of course, it also works as a showcase and dissemination platform for small companies and projects that live by this knowledge, but our ambition is greater: to create conditions so that what we have received from previous generations can reach the next generations, not surviving, but gaining the recognition it deserves as a rare heritage, differentiating and of extraordinary value ", indicates.

The goal, stresses Sonia Santiago, is to ensure “that these offices have a future and that this future is as valued as the history they carry”.

Having as background “a strong awareness of Portuguese identity” and “a huge respect for the legacy” that carries, the group The Value of Time focuses on the promotion of Portuguese culture, history, heritage and traditions, but argues that preserving does not mean “staying still”.

“There is a permanent restlessness and above all a huge belief in what we do. Because getting to Times Square isn't just about money. Anyone with financial capacity can open a store in Times Square. The question is to have the courage to believe that a Portuguese brand can occupy that place and dare to take it where very few would imagine that a Portuguese brand could arrive ", summarizes.