The Papastratos family business was founded in 1913 by the brothers Evangelos and Sotiris. Soon all four brothers were working for the firm. They reinvested all their earnings, thus enabling the company to build 12 warehouses all over Greece long before any of the brothers had purchased a house. Initially they focused on the export of tobacco, but in the 1930s, as exports fell substantially, they turned their attention to the manufacturing of cigarettes in Greece and abroad. In 1933 they became the first Greek industrialists to open a factory in western Europe (Berlin), but the rise of Nazism resulted in its closure at a loss that wiped out all the profits from the previous decade.