Well… lots of stories! My grandfather was a very wealthy man with a business vision. He owned a Porto-based umbrella and sunshade factory. This business was perfectly stable and a good business at the time. He often went to a barber on Rua do Bonjardim in Porto, where Mr. José Cotta was also a customer. He was the great technical mentor of the future business and was looking for a partner to open an optician’s shop. So, the barber introduced the two of them and they began to plan the opening of Retina, which took place on April 2, 1949. They were joined by three other partners, one of whom was Mr. Carvalho, who for many years had been a salesman at José Cotta, Mendes & Cª Ldª (the name of the company that owned the Retina brand).
At the time (in the 1950s) this job of visiting opticians all over the country was practically non-existent, so Mr. Carvalho had his hands full. The curious part of this story is that this barber was the father of historian Hélder Pacheco, who coincidentally is a customer of our store. One day, without knowing who he was, I told him the whole story and he said: “That gentleman was my father”. This story is even told in the book “Comerciantes do Porto”, which he wrote.
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