{"id":401334,"date":"2025-12-23T10:01:38","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T13:01:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/?p=401334"},"modified":"2025-12-23T11:41:20","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T14:41:20","slug":"one-hundred-years-of-history-and-perseverance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/one-hundred-years-of-history-and-perseverance\/","title":{"rendered":"One hundred years of history and perseverance"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

S\u00e3o Paulo \u2014 When he arrived in Porto Alegre in 1923, Raphael Kalil Dabdab was already an experienced tailor, despite being only 23 or 24 years old. He soon opened a tailor shop on the former Rua da Ladeira (now General C\u00e2mara). He must have noticed a strong demand\u2014both his own and that of his peers\u2014for fine, varied fabrics, and the tailor shop eventually became a store focused on serving tailors. In the 1940s, the business<\/a> moved to the traditional corner of Volunt\u00e1rios da P\u00e1tria Street and Pra\u00e7a Parob\u00e9, in the heart of Porto Alegre\u2019s historic downtown.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"The
The DabDab family in Brazil<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\u201cThere were no large department stores or retail chains like there are today,\u201d says DabDab administrator S\u00e9rgio Martins, the store\u2019s longest-serving employee, who has worked at the company for 40 years. \u201cAnd for a long time, many people relied on tailors to have their clothes made to measure.\u201d As tailors became scarce, the store began serving new audiences, such as clothing manufacturers and dressmakers (who never went out of fashion).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raphael DabDab had six children. Of these, Elias and Kalil ran the business, with the latter managing a branch on Rua dos Andradas for thirty years (1962\u20131992). At one point, Elias bought out his siblings\u2019 shares. As he had no children, the store is now inherited by his partner, who is in her nineties. Since Elias\u2019s death in 2016, Martins himself has taken over the administration.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"The
The fabric store in its early years<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Martins, who began his professional life at a watch shop (another field that has virtually disappeared) at the age of 13, also worked as an office assistant in banks. \u201cBack then, you just had to cross the street and jobs would rain down,\u201d he recalls. He joined Tecidos Raphael DabDab to help with accounting, knowing nothing about fabrics. Today, he speaks fluently about linen, cashmere, tropical wool, and tricoline. He knows where each comes from and laments that Brazil no longer produces fabrics as it once did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At 68, married to a woman of Syrian descent (a coincidence, as he was already married to her before joining the store) and with one son, Martins is already retired, but even aware of the difficulties faced by the sector, he still believes in the store\u2019s potential. \u201cElias wasn\u2019t very fond of technology\u2014it was a struggle to get him to buy a computer for the accounting\u2014but now we even sell via WhatsApp,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Martins holds many memories of his boss, including learning how to make cigars and labneh by following Elias\u2019s step-by-step instructions. The learning took place during a visit by a Syrian consul to his boss\u2019s home, which required intense preparation\u2014and Martins was there helping, even in the kitchen. \u201cI love cooking, but Arab cuisine is very labor-intensive, so I prefer to buy the kits sold here downtown,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two floods and a pandemic<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Despite strong Asian competition, especially from China, and the growing fast-fashion market from the 1980s and 1990s onward, the store kept its doors open in the same style as always\u2014many of the furnishings, in fact, are the same as a century ago (or nearly so), which, Martins says, attracts curious visitors. \u201cIt\u2019s a true museum, as if stepping back in time,\u201d says the manager, who has lived through many stories there. Being a store with a historic feel but offering a fabric mix that meets today\u2019s customers is a real asset.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"The
The DabDab store today<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Beyond global competition, the store survived two floods\u2014in 1941 and 2024\u2014and a pandemic. Closing during the coronavirus outbreak without e-commerce sales was a blow, but manageable. Loyal customers and WhatsApp sales helped. Yet nothing was as impactful as the 2024 flood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The muddy floodwaters that swept through downtown Porto Alegre reached 1.5 meters inside the store. According to Martins, the loss amounted to millions. \u201cWe lost almost everything. Many fine fabrics from England and Italy turned to waste,\u201d he laments. Amid the chaos, with employees having to handle cleaning, repairs, and painting themselves due to a lack of available labor, Martins recalls a touching moment, \u201cWe were there cleaning, saving what we could, when a longtime employee looked at me and said: we\u2019re going to make it to 100 years. That was a real encouragement for me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On December 23, 2025, without much fanfare, Martins and the other five employees of Tecidos Raphael DabDab<\/a> celebrate the store\u2019s 100 years of history and perseverance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read more:
<\/em>Collection unveils new facts on Arab immigration to Brazil<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Report by D\u00e9bora Rubin, in collaboration with ANBA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Translated by Guilherme Miranda<\/strong><\/p>\n

Supplied<\/div>
Supplied<\/div>
Supplied<\/div>
Supplied<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Founded in 1925 by Syrian Raphael Kalil Dabdab, the Tecidos Raphael Dabdab store in Porto Alegre has faced floods, the pandemic, unfair competition\u2014and remains standing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2309,"featured_media":401253,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[91],"tags":[55398,5335,16007,2267,41304,10273,14869,3143,9611,3656,34968],"class_list":{"0":"post-401334","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-dabdab","9":"tag-fabrics","10":"tag-imigracao-en-2","11":"tag-immigration","12":"tag-porto-alegre-en","13":"tag-retail-en","14":"tag-siria-en-2","15":"tag-store","16":"tag-syria-en","17":"tag-syrians","18":"tag-varejo-en-3"},"wps_subtitle":"Founded in 1925 by Syrian Raphael Kalil Dabdab, the Tecidos Raphael Dabdab store in Porto Alegre has faced floods, the pandemic, unfair competition\u2014and remains standing.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2309"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=401334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401334\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/401253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}