Former door salesman, he migrated to on-line and has already bought 1 million dish towels

The story of Victor Souza, 28 years old, in entrepreneurship started out of necessity. To pay for a health treatment for his mother, he started selling bed, table and bath products from door to door last year, in São Paulo. The business grew after Souza decided to focus on the best-selling item, the dish towel, and bet on marketplaces. Today, the entrepreneur sells 3,000 cloths a day under his brand, Pano a Pano.

It all started when Souza asked for a R$200 raise at the company where he worked in the accounting area to help his mother. After being denied and needing the money, he created a venture suddenly and without planning. The resolution came from a ten-minute meeting with an aunt. The two outlined a business strategy, bought R$1,400 worth of products in the Brás region, in the capital of São Paulo, and walked down the street where they lived to sell them. “My aunt taught me how to do it. I didn’t know and I was very nervous. She was the one who knocked on the door and sold the first few times,” she recalls. That same morning, the pair sold about 80% of the stock, managing to earn twice as much as invested.

After being able to pay for her mother’s treatment, entrepreneurship stayed there. And the certainty came when he saw a cousin undertake in a craft marketplace and was successful in going with her to a sales event. “I thought I could sell there too. I told my aunt, but she chose not to. We split the gains and remain separate,” he explains.

Realizing that door-to-door sales took up a lot of his day, he quit his old job and decided to focus even more on his entrepreneurial journey. The result, however, was not what he had expected. “I got unemployment insurance, entered a craft marketplace and spent four months trying to sell something, but it didn’t work,” he says. The first sale was an order for 10 cloths that generated a profit of R$ 0.60.

He didn’t want to give up. “He who sells one sells two. I was perfecting myself”, he says. Souza returned to Brás, stocked up on dish towels and, this time, placed the products on several marketplaces, including Shopee, which he classifies as a game-changer. “That’s when my business escalated,” he says. “On the first day, I had 20 orders. After that, we broke records every month.” The growth was so high that Souza already had to change and expand the warehouse he uses and hired his mother, aunt and cousin to help with the venture. What in the beginning was called Rubber Store changed to Pano a Pano and gained service, collection, administrative and financial areas.

In the global marketplace alone, he has sold more than 573,000 tea towels, with daily orders of 2,000 items. The total account is 1 million pieces sold, with 3 thousand daily sales.

The strategy behind the sales success of such an everyday product is variety, according to Souza. The portfolio has more than 80 models, from the cheapest to the most differentiated, 60% of which are exclusive items. In addition to increasing his sales channels with his own website and other marketplaces, he also says he is always on the lookout for new developments on the market. Pano a Pano also sells cleaning and microfiber cloths and today they deliver you express, up to 24 hours.

With the strengthening of the brand on social networks, the entrepreneur also has a communication agency to take care of social media. As a result, the business has already reached the milestone of having received 36,000 orders on the same day. “There was an employee sleeping in the company to take care of it.”

One of the most important points for Souza, according to him, is the recognition of his team and helping to employ more and more people. “Whenever I interview someone, I say that that person is joining a company that will become a multinational. I want to generate 100 thousand jobs, I am ambitious. I understand that I won’t be able to do it alone, but dreaming high and dreaming low is just as much work.” Long-term expectations are to internationalize and increase the team.

Source: PEGN Magazine