Set up in 1920, today Barbot is a leading player in the Portuguese interior decorating and refurbishment market.

Barbot was founded by Diogo Barbot in Porto, in 1920, in the aftermath of World War I, with a factory situated in the Santo Ildefonso neighbourhood. It was a family business with a traditional image, the fundamental characteristics of which were rigour, safety and quality. All the printed materials and packaging at the time were marked with its founder’s initials – DB.

Over the next few years, Barbot became firmly established in the market. In 1958, under Carlos Aires Pereira, a new factory was built in Laborim. Four years later, in 1962, with the company now directed by Zaida Barbot, the founder’s daughter, the brand’s most famous paint and current sales leader, Barbot Dioplaste, was created.

The violent fire that destroyed the entire Santo Ildefonso factory in 1981 indisputably changed the history of the brand. That moment marked a new cycle, not only in terms of the company’s management, now led by Carlos Barbot, Zaida Barbot’s son, but also in structural terms. Barbot embarked on a programme of expansion, with the transfer of its premises from Porto to Vila Nova de Gaia in 1982, and developed a policy of acquisitions and partnerships that helped to strengthen the brand and extend its range of products.

As a result of this strategy, by the mid-1980s, the company presented a stronger sales team, capable of covering the country from north to south (Barbot’s first regional office opened in Évora in 1987), its own logistics fleet and greater production capacity.

Throughout the 1990s, Barbot continued to expand, constantly launching new products. This expansion led to a fourfold increase in warehouse area and the opening of a new factory in Canelas in 2002, enabling Barbot to cover the whole country, its modern facilities equipped with advanced technology and offering high levels of responsiveness and competitiveness.

Barbot is currently present from the north to the south of Portugal, with two factories in the municipality of Vila Nova de Gaia, an extended network of resellers and 21 of its own points of sale. However, the company does not work only with the domestic market. Today the Barbot Group sells its products in Portugal, Spain, France, Belgium, Angola and Cape Verde.