Meet the Brazilian CEO of a US firm that earns US$ 432 million from pans

Royal Prestige wants to make Brazil its second biggest market in three years; currently, country represents 1% of global revenue

A business with revenues of US$ 423 million in 2021, the American cookware brand Royal Prestige wants to grow in Brazil – origin of almost R$ 24 million in sales, or 1% of global revenues. It seems little, but the bet on Brazil has a special reason: the company’s CEO, Paulo Moledo, is a Brazilian.

In three years, he wants Brazil to reach the second position, occupied by Mexico, which holds about 30% – the United States concentrates 50% of the business. The company operates in the segment premium with around 85 products including pans, knives, glasses and blenders, items whose prices can vary between R$ 200 and R$ 10 thousand. The brand is recognized in part for its products made with surgical steel and a 50-year warranty.

Created in 1959, in Madison, Wisconsin, the American brand operates under the direct sales model and has the peculiarity of focusing its entire strategy on the Latin American market. The change came about 30 years ago when they realized that Latino distributors had left the American group behind.

The company also understood that its positioning, with the proposal to gather family and friends around the table for meals, dialogued more strongly with Latin American culture. “The company decided to do what was working and left the Royal Prestige only for Latin consumers”, says Paulo MoledoCEO and President of Hy Citethe company that owns Royal Prestige.

The Brazilian arrived at the company in 2019 as senior vice president of strategy, in February 2020 he took over as president and since April he has also been the CEO.

How did you join Hy Cite?

Outside Brazil for 24 years, the professional joined the company already making the transition to assume leadership in a process that lasted about three years. Hy Cite is a family business and was in its second generation when the members decided to put a market professional in charge.

The invitation to Moledo came because of his knowledge of the direct sales market in which he has been operating for 16 years. During the period, he accumulated experience in companies such as Avon and Jafra, where he was president for the United States and member of the board. “It has been [uma experiência] wonderful and the results have been positive, which also helps”, he says about his first months as CEO.

He defines his trip abroad as a “dream of a boy who wanted to see the world”. Graduated in economics, he was working in the finance area of ​​a company when he had the opportunity, in the late 1990s, to work at the company’s headquarters in the United States. “I accepted the invitation and never came back.”

Why Brazil has become the market of the moment

In the country since 2010, Royal Prestige believes that the current moment is right to expand the operation. At the time of entering Brazil, the company had also landed in other countries in the region and chose to adjust them first, due to the ease of the language.

“We are ready for more aggressive growth”, says Moledo. He says that throughout his time in Brazil, the brand managed to form a network of distributors, adjust bureaucratic and legal issues and even align the actions in which it seeks to offer experience premium to potential customers, which includes product demonstration and gastronomic experience.

It is from this perception that the brand began to make a media offensive to be recognized by the public. With investments of 7.2 million in communication strategy in 2022, it became a sponsor of the Masterchef program, by Band, an initiative that should be repeated in 2023. And it has used influencers from both the gastronomy and entrepreneurship segments to present the brand and its business model.

Source: Exam