The income of this entrepreneur to earn R$ 1.9 billion from the sale of tires over the web

CantuStore is a marketplace for selling tires, most of them from little-known manufacturers. Founded in 2006, the company doubled in size in the pandemic

The marketplace for selling tires CantuStore had net revenue of 451 million reais in the second quarter of 2022, according to the company’s own data presented to the market.

This is an expansion of 51% compared to the same period last year.

In 12 months, the company had gross revenue of 1.9 billion reais, a record there.

In the period, CantuStore’s share in the tires in Brazil rose from 3.4% to 5%.

Since the year 2020, and because of the pandemicthe company practically doubled in size.

What is CantuStore

The results call attention to the strategy of a company willing to completely change the way it sells tires in Brazil.

Founded in 2006, in Itajaí, a city on the coast of Santa Catarina, home to one of the main port terminals for importing containers in Brazil, CantuStore was a pioneer in the country in the sale of tires from unknown brands at very competitive prices.

Until then, the typical business model of the sector was a verticalization similar to that of the automotive market.

In this model, a brand manufactures the products and sells them in a network of authorized dealers responsible for, among other things, showing the brand’s visual identity to all corners – and, thus, transforming the branding of tire brands into something as strong as that of the automakers themselves.

who is the entrepreneur

For the entrepreneur from Paraná Beto Cantufounder of CantuStore, the model was a real competition in the sector.

Coming from a family of entrepreneurs After decades in the logistics sector in Pato Branco, in the south of Paraná, Cantu saw the difficulties faced by self-employed truck drivers when it came to bargaining offers to change tires in a market dominated by few brands.

Or, still, to find the dealership stores of the big brands in the corners where they drove — and, unfortunately, they had the bad luck to deal with a flat tire.

Beto Cantu’s innovation was to look for a tire manufacturer in Asian countries like China and Vietnam — many of them until then exclusive partners of brands already known in Brazil — and to sign import contracts directly with them.

“The idea of ​​the business was to always cut the middlemen in the middle of the way to reduce the cost at the end”, says Cantu.

Today, CantuStore is the main distributor in Brazil of a series of Asian tire brands that are almost unknown here, such as the Korean kumhothe chinese Aeolus and the indian CEAT.

How is the structure of CantuStore

The CantuStore model has three sales channels:

• TireStore: e-commerce for end consumers opened in 2012, with products from CantuStore and partners
• Sale of tires for fleets and companies of vehicle rental
• Supply of tires to small multi-brand resellers

To support the three channels, CantuStore set up a physical structure with five distribution centers and 33 branches in the five regions.

“We have a relevant capillarity to support online sales”, says Cantu.

The pandemic contributed to the accelerated expansion of CantuStore by breaking down once and for all the barriers to the online sale of tires.

“Who until then made a point of going to a store to touch the tire before buying ended up being unable to do so in the middle of the quarantine”, he says.

“At that moment, we were prepared for an online experience capable of meeting this new demand.”

To a large extent, this is all due to a UX oiled on the PneuStore website. There, a lot of filters help you choose the ideal model — width, rim, brand, car model and vehicle type are some of them.

Two other novelties contributed to the good moment of CantuStore:

• A fleet of CantuStore vans has been touring the main Brazilian cities in a kind of ‘tire delivery‘ — the customer buys online and pays someone from the company to come to their garage to install the product. In the pandemic, the service pumped.
• The decision to create small-sized container stores, attached to spaces with a lot of drivers, such as gas station.

What’s the plans

CantuStore’s growth caught the market’s attention — and the company’s appetite for an IPO.

In October 2021, the company filed for an IPO with the Brazilian Securities and Exchange Commission, the CVM.

The goal is to be listed in the B3 New Marketa group of companies with high governance standards.

The idea was to make the IPO between December and January of this year.

The plan ended up suspended due to the uncertainties in the capital market caused by the escalation of interest rates around the world.

“We continue to monitor market conditions to see the best conditions for this offer”, he says.

The offer will be of the primary type, aimed at strengthening the company’s cash, and secondary, when the resources are used to buy part of the shares of current shareholders.

The plan for Cantu’s expansion includes diversification without leaving the tire market — that is, without ‘reinventing the wheel’ of a successful business so far.

Currently, there are more than 4,000 SKUs. This list ranges from tires for conventional vehicles, such as cars or trucks, to models for agricultural implements, such as harvestersor even for bicycles.

“There is still room to grow with more offers for this group of vehicles”, says Beto Cantu.

Geographic expansion is also on the radar. The goal is to reach 40 branches in the coming months.

Source: Exam