Matilde Fieschi
In Zurich he ‘chased’ a biker who had some of his shoes on his feet, at Amsterdam airport he has a bet with the team to see which one of them will find the ToWorkFor on the tracks first.
Albano Fernandes is the founder and president of AMF, a footwear company in Guimarães that makes professional footwear, adapted to each person’s work. Because what we wear at any given moment influences health, well-being – and sick leave – is at work in sensorized shoes. It is also working on a type of shoe ‘bimby’ that allows it to reduce production costs by 60% and compete with the Chinese, who are market leaders.
Passing by on the podcast ExpressAlbano Fernandes tells how he got from 1999 – when he didn’t have the money to take his girlfriend to celebrate the creation of the company – to here.
Matilde Fieschi
Other topics you may hear throughout the conversation
“Engineering opened my horizons, but I’m a shoemaker, I’m a factory floorer, I like the smell of glue”
“We are shoemakers but 20% of our staff have a degree: We have a lot of mechanical and environmental engineering, design, economics, data and the oldest one is me”
“A businessman has to be irreverent, have dreams: fWe are the first company in the world to present technical footwear with the Michelin brand, with Michelin tires”
“We have several sensors inside the shoe that measure steps, loads, humidity”
“60% of the cost of shoes is labor. The rest is technology and materials. And materials cost as much in China as they do in Portugal”
The podcast that tells us what is innovative and differentiating is being done by companies in Portugal. In the “League of Innovators”, Elisabete Miranda and Pedro Lima talk to managers, directors and professionals who tell us stories that conquered the market and are contributing to the economic transformation of the country and its image. They tell us about the victories that brought them here, but also about the anxieties, the competitors they envy, the managers they admire, the professionals they have and the profiles they need to hire. Every week, on Wednesdays.