The Americanas’ business practices included late payments and interest charges from the supplier. That’s what Itamar Serpa, president and founder of the cosmetics company Embelleze, says in an interview with UOL Líderes.
What did he say
Americans delayed payments. Itamar Serpa spoke about the difficulties in receiving payments from Americanas. According to him, the retailer delayed payment for products and, when paid, charged interest from the supplier.
Spontaneous posting on TikTok made sales explode. According to Serpa, a spontaneous post on social networks increased sales of the company’s main product, Novex Recarga de Queratina, whose poster girl is socialite Narcisa Tamborindeguy.
strategy of beautify is to focus on sales champions. The businessman said that the company is focused on its products with more sales. The intention is to expand the distribution of these items to conquer other markets. With this, the expectation is to expand sales, even in a difficult year in the economy.
Listen to the full interview on the UOL Leaders podcast. You can also watch the video interview on the UOL YouTube channel. See highlights of the interview below:
American “Cheat”
We lost money there. They don’t pay, or they pay too late. It’s a contract we signed there many years ago and we didn’t have the strength to deactivate it. In a way, they did us a little bit of damage. Not so much because we had made a payment system that they have, in which we pay a very high interest rate, but we received it.
They paid when they could, and there were times when they simply didn’t pay. It was a mess for us. Then they cheated, extended the titles and then charged us to pay the interest for the extension that they themselves gave. You can’t understand and you can’t explain. This type of action is bad because it creates distrust in the market.
After the interview, UOL questioned Embelleze about how much damage it had with Americanas and whether it filed a lawsuit against the retail giant. The company responded in a note that “it has always had a good commercial relationship with the brand” and that “at this moment it is not valid to mention issues of purchase and sale between the two companies”. He also said that he respects “the contracts and terms established in the history between the two companies” and that he closed a negotiation on April 3 with Americanas for the continuity of the partnership between the two.
The Americanas were asked about the practices reported by the businessman. In a note, the company said that it “has a historic relationship with Embelleze” and that it recently “resumed commercial negotiation with the supplier with the guarantee of up-to-date payments, as provided for in the ongoing judicial recovery process”.
Sales champion went viral on TikTok
Today [o campeão de vendas] is the Novex keratin recharge. It is a keratin-based treatment product. A phenomenon happened to him the year before last that a blogger published that he was very good and went viral. Now Narcissa is doing the communication. We are taking advantage of her style so that the product is better known in other layers of society. We had it last year with Jojo Todynho, but it didn’t give such a result… we had it with Joelma, but it reaches more of the Northeast. So it has to change sometimes, not stay too much in one to reach all these regions.
Embelleze says that in November 2021, a spontaneous video talking about the Novex product was posted on TikTok, and the product went viral. From then on, other consumers began to make spontaneous posts. Thanks to the videos, Novex sales grew by 1,304% between November 2021 and January 2022, says the company. Despite the businessman’s comment about the campaign with Jojo Todynho, Embelleze said in a note that the action “was a successful case on TikTok due to the values of inclusion and female empowerment”.
Strategy in a difficult year
This is not a year of launches, it is a year of consolidating the launches we have made. We are focused on the products that sell the most. If we focus on sales and expand the distribution of items that already sell well, we believe they will sell much more. The perspective is that this year the growth will be smaller. But we want our share, we don’t want to be late. So we changed the strategy precisely to gain space and expand sales in relation to 2022.
Dollar was stable and became a challenge
We used to consider the dollar a stable currency, now it is the dollar that is variable. Today this is a challenge for those who matter. Another is that, with inflation, purchasing power falls. Another key challenge is credit. Much of the company’s profit ends up in the banks. Another challenge is in the area of qualified personnel. You need to professionalize the company, but it gets more and more expensive and you can’t find an employee.
Who is Itamar Serpa?
- Age: 81 years old
- Birthplace: Vitória (ES)
- Current position: Founder and President of Embelleze
- Highlights in career: He worked at Bayer before founding Embelleze. Prior to that, he worked as an office boy, bus conductor and teacher.
- Training: Chemical Engineering from UFRJ
How is Embelleze
- Employees: 10 thousand direct and indirect employees
- Invoicing:
- 2020: BRL 614 million
- 2022: BRL 400 million
- 2023 (estimate): BRL 500 million
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