Entrepreneurs of the Year 2021
Entrepreneur from the interior of Maranhão becomes one of the Brazilian billionaires with a retail chain that invoices more than R$ 14 billion a year and that plans to double in size by 2025.
The trajectory of the businessman from Maranhense Ilson Mateus Rodrigues, founder and president of the Grupo Mateus retail chain, would yield a movie or one of those self-help and motivation books. But not now. History, he says, is still being written. Ahead of the largest retail chain in the North and Northeast regions – and the fourth largest retail food company in Brazil –, the former shoeshine boy, mechanical turner, gold miner from Serra Pelada and cachaça vendor born in Imperatriz, in the interior of the state, is today owner of a company in rapid expansion, with sales of R$ 14.4 billion last year and 195 stores in Maranhão, Pará, Piauí and Ceará. “Our company is the result of persistence and the fruit of hard work”, said Rodrigues, 58, who started the company in 1986 as a small warehouse measuring 50 m² in the municipality of Balsas (MA). “I usually say that we have to be like lizards in the desert, adapting to the environment in order to survive and always move forward,” he said.
In February 2022, the businessman – elected by DINHEIRO Entrepreneur of the Year in Retail – will make the group’s unprecedented debut in two new northeastern states, Pernambuco and Bahia, in the same day, with the opening of stores in Petrolina and Juazeiro. “After our IPO in 2020, we are accelerating expansion and consolidating our leadership in all the locations where we operate”, said the businessman. The plan, according to him, is to focus the strategies and investments in the regions in which it operates, for the next ten years, at least. Only then explore other regions, such as the South, Southeast and Midwest. “I don’t want to shoot all over the place and be weak in several states,” he said. According to the 2020 ranking of the American Forbes magazine, Ilson Mateus has a personal fortune of R$ 20 billion, the ninth most wealthy Brazilian and one of the 11 compatriots on the list.
By raising R$4.63 billion with the IPO, Rodrigues captained the largest IPO in Brazil in 2020, in the middle of a year of economic downturn and pandemic. The strength of the brand and the company’s growth potential seduced investors on the stock market. With reason. The conglomerate also operates supermarkets, furniture and appliance stores, the bakery industry, distribution of medicines and construction materials. In the list of the biggest wholesalers in Brazil, it is behind Assaí (Grupo Pão de Açúcar), Atacadão (from Carrefour) and the Chilean group Censosud.
EXPANSION In 2021 alone, 45 stores were opened. In December, the company opened the doors of nine new stores on various business fronts, four of which for electronics, three for retail and two for cash and carry. To sustain the group’s growth in six states in the Northeast, administrative offices were opened in Recife and Salvador. In addition, Distribution Centers are already operating in the municipalities of Cabo de Santo Agostinho, in the metropolitan region of Recife, and in Feira de Santana, in the interior of Bahia.
By 2025, the company must double the number of stores in its portfolio. But expansion is not limited to opening stores. According to Rodrigues, part of the growth will come from e-commerce, with the launch of an app to serve the end customer and support the sales team and sales representatives. “We are carrying out several experiments in all areas to create critical mass and learn what works”, said the businessman. “Here at the company I always say that a small loss is a profit. If we don’t make money in a certain business, at least the learning process remains.”
An ardent Christian, Ilson Mateus says he has often bent his knees to make the company’s most important decisions. “I don’t stop praying and asking God for guidance in running the company and my life,” he said. “In many moments of my trajectory, if it weren’t for divine intervention, it wouldn’t have happened,” he said.
Judging by the personal success story and by the good performance of Grupo Mateus, the faithful businessman from Maranhão has had his prayers answered.
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