Why I'm building Tropinest from three cultures, not one

I landed in São Paulo in January 2025 carrying a question I'd been holding since I was 7. The question was simple: what if I had grown up here. I expected the trip to make me Brazilian. It made me clearer about the opposite.

I'd lived in Switzerland for 22 years by then. Rural Bern first, near Thun. College in Thun. Bachelor's in Zurich, master's in Lausanne. Years working in finance and fintech in Zurich and Zug. The Brazilian half of me lived underneath all of that, asking the same question on Sunday afternoons and on long flights, and the question got louder the closer I got to 30. So I went back to find out.

Almost two years in, I have the answer.

Two halves was already not enough

I'm more Swiss than Brazilian. Generalising, but it's true. The 22 years won. I dress quietly. I show up on time. I'm relentlessly diplomatic. I plan things and finish them. The Brazilian instincts are still there - I love a churrasco with my guitar out, I hug people I haven't seen in three weeks, I believe in keeping life warm - but the operating system underneath is mostly Swiss.

I went to Brazil to pick a side. The trip clarified that I couldn't.

What surprised me more was the third thing. I'd assumed the answer would be Brazilian-or-Swiss. It wasn't. Once I started paying attention, I noticed how much of my taste came from somewhere I'd never lived. Italian. Renaissance art, restraint in design, the discipline behind Italian craft. I'd been borrowing from that aesthetic since I was a teenager and never thought to count it. Once I did, "Brazilian or Swiss" stopped working as a model. I had three. Not three identities exactly. Three sensibilities, all real, all earned over different years.

That's when Tropinest stopped trying to be a Brazilian brand for Swiss buyers and started trying to be something else.

What "three cultures" actually means in practice

It's easy to write "fusion brand" and have it mean nothing. So here's what we're actually doing.

From Brazil, the warmth. The instinct to make things sensory and communal. The view that beauty matters. Music at a meal. Humour as the default.

From Switzerland, the standard. Quality as a baseline rather than as a marketing claim. Things that work. Restraint when restraint serves you better than show. Design that doesn't shout.

From Italy, the eye. Proportion. The patience to make the tenth small adjustment rather than ship the seventh. The sense that an object is worth getting right.

None of these are exclusive to those countries, obviously. But this is the story I can honestly tell, because each one came to me through a real path: 7-year-old Brazil, 22 years of Switzerland, decades of Italian aesthetic exposure that lived in books and museums and a household with Italian taste.

Why this is honest, not a marketing trick

The version of this brand that would have been easier to launch is "Brazilian wellness for Switzerland." Sol de Janeiro did that. Natura does it. The lane exists.

I couldn't write that brand because I'm not that founder. I didn't grow up in the Amazon and discover Swiss markets. I grew up in Switzerland, missed Brazil, went back to find out, and found that the answer wasn't "Brazil." The answer was that I'd been quietly assembling a third thing for thirty years and just hadn't named it.

Tropinest is the place where the third thing becomes products. Not a Brazilian brand with Swiss packaging. A triad-curated wellness and home brand whose founder is, structurally, all three.

What this means for what we sell

We source from Brazilian artisans because that's where the warmth and the sensory texture live. We hold the work to Swiss quality standards. We compose with an Italian eye for proportion.

You'll see that in every product page when we launch. Not as a tagline. As the actual shape of the work.

Twenty-two years was a long time to carry the question. The answer earned every year of it.