Ipanema Brand Guidelines: Grendene’s 2001 Sandal Brand and Its Campaign Faces

A plastics company from the Serra Gaúcha moves into flip-flops.

Ipanema is a brand of sandals and flip-flops made by Grendene, the Brazilian footwear company whose administration is based in Farroupilha, in Rio Grande do Sul. Grendene’s own company history says it launched Ipanema in 2001 to move fully into beachwear, with women’s and men’s flip-flops at competitive prices; a 2018 report on the news site TNH1 also gives 2001 as the year the brand was founded. In 2016 the brand marked its fifteenth anniversary, the company says.

Grendene itself began three decades earlier. Portuguese Wikipedia says the twins Pedro and Alexandre Grendene Bartelle founded it as Plásticos Grendene in Farroupilha on 25 February 1971, first making plastic covers for wine flasks; English Wikipedia says the company moved on to plastic parts for farm machinery and then to soles and heels for shoes. Its first footwear line was the Nuar sandal in 1978, Portuguese Wikipedia says, followed in 1979 by Melissa, the plastic sandal inspired by the shoes of French fishermen, and in 1986 by Rider, a flip-flop aimed at men. Grendene’s history adds a children’s line, Melissinha, and, in 1994, the women’s brand Grendha. In 1980, English Wikipedia says, the company opened its first plant dedicated to making shoe moulds, in Carlos Barbosa; Grendene’s history describes it as the tool shop that produces the moulds for its plastic footwear.

Production moved north. Portuguese Wikipedia says tax incentives, lower labour costs and easier access to export routes led Grendene to move its factories from Farroupilha to the state of Ceará: a first plant opened in Fortaleza in 1990 and a second in Sobral three years later, with another later in Crato. The company’s registered seat is now in Sobral, while its administration stays in Farroupilha. In September 2007, Portuguese Wikipedia says, Grendene began industrial work in Teixeira de Freitas, in Bahia, producing the Ipanema model. Grendene has been listed on the Novo Mercado segment of the São Paulo stock exchange since 29 October 2004. English Wikipedia says that in 2018 the company had eleven manufacturing plants, all of them in Brazil.

Campaign faces, songs and brand spaces.

Ipanema’s image has been built through campaigns with well-known faces. Grendene’s history says that in 2002 it began a partnership with the model Gisele Bündchen, creating the Ipanema GB line; in 2006 it signed an international contract with her to sell the line abroad, and in 2008 it launched the Ipanema G2B line in Berlin with her present. TNH1 reported in 2018 that the partnership with Bündchen had covered both advertising and the creation of sandal collections.

Later campaigns turned to Brazilian pop music and to women’s freedom as a theme. In September 2018 TNH1 reported that the singer Anitta was the new face of Ipanema, singing “Livre da Cabeça aos Pés”, a song written for a video shot at locations across Rio de Janeiro. The campaign, created by the agency Mutato, continued the positioning the brand had launched in 2017, “Livre dos Pés à Cabeça” — free from head to toe — and also featured four influencers, the report said.

Ipanema has also used spaces of its own. Grendene says it opened the Refúgio Ipanema, a pop-up shop on Rua das Pedras in Búzios, in 2013, and the Casa Ipanema, a meeting space for the brand and its customers in Rio de Janeiro, in 2014. In 2016 the brand marked its fifteenth anniversary there with a retrospective called “15 anos de Bossa”. In December 2020 IstoÉ Dinheiro reported that Grendene had begun selling Ipanema sandals through self-service vending machines, which work like coffee machines: the customer picks a product and pays on the spot. About 500 products were offered at first, at points in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and the United States, the magazine said.

Brazilian fashion and footwear.

Brazil’s fashion and footwear brands cover a wide range: rubber flip-flops and plastic jelly shoes, women’s shoes and handbags, beachwear and printed dresses, and men’s basics and denim. Many of them sit inside a small number of listed groups, and their corporate pages set out founders, owners and stock-market listings alongside the product ranges.

Footwear is led by large manufacturers. Alpargatas, founded in São Paulo in 1907, has made Havaianas since 1962, and Portuguese Wikipedia describes it as an Itaúsa company since its 2017 change of ownership. Grendene, founded in Farroupilha in 1971 and listed on the São Paulo stock exchange since 2004, makes Melissa, Ipanema and Rider, with plants in the north-eastern states of Ceará and Bahia, according to Portuguese Wikipedia.

Clothing and women’s shoes have consolidated too. Portuguese Wikipedia says Azzas 2154 was formed in 2024 from the merger of Arezzo&Co, the Belo Horizonte shoe group behind Arezzo and Schutz, and Grupo Soma, the Rio de Janeiro group built on Animale and Farm, which had bought Cia. Hering in 2021. Ownership in the sector changes often, so each guide in this series states its brand’s owner as a dated fact.

These brands present themselves through campaigns with well-known faces, collaborations with foreign labels and their own stores and brand spaces, from Galeria Melissa in São Paulo to Casa Ipanema in Rio de Janeiro. This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it and where it says its products are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A family-controlled maker with a listed parent.

Ipanema remains a Grendene brand. Portuguese Wikipedia lists it among the company’s brands with Melissa, Rider and Grendha, and names Alexandre Grendene Bartelle as the majority shareholder. World Footwear described Grendene in March 2026 as the Brazilian owner of the brands Melissa and Ipanema, and Brazil Journal in December 2024 called it the maker of Rider flip-flops and of Melissa and Ipanema sandals.

Its sales abroad have passed through a joint venture. Grendene says it set up Grendene Global Brands, based in the United Kingdom, in 2021 to distribute and sell its products outside Brazil, starting with the United States, Canada, China and Hong Kong, with a 49.9 percent holding. In December 2024 Brazil Journal reported that Grendene had decided to buy the 50.1 percent held by the investment firm Radar, formerly 3G Radar, ending the joint venture, which had been set up to build Grendene’s own operations in the United States and China; Grendene’s history records that it acquired 100 percent of the business in 2024. The same year Grendene launched its own online store, Loja Grendene, which sells Ipanema alongside its other brands, the company says.

For a design guide, Ipanema shows how a mass-market sandal brand can lean on campaign faces, songs and small brand spaces rather than on one fixed product. Compare Melissa, Grendene’s older plastic-shoe label, and Havaianas, the Alpargatas flip-flop launched in 1962. For this guide we use a sand beige, a sea teal, a coral and a deep ink with a geometric sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Ipanema’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.