São Paulo – Credeal, the largest producer of copybooks in Brazil, wants to expand sales in the Arab market. The company has exported to Lebanon for eight years and also intends to sell to other countries in the region. "It’s a tough market to get into, but once you enter, you no longer leave," says the Export coordinator at the company, Doani Soccol Pavan, about the loyalty of the Arabs and their identification with Brazilian products.
The Lebanese client is a distributor and also has his own stores. According to Pavan, items shipped abroad are very similar to those consumed in Brazil, considering types of art and colour. The language used in the written part of the diaries and copybooks is English. Credeal ships around three 40-foot containers to Lebanon a year, at a value of approximately US$ 200,000. Contact with the importer was made at Paper World, a sector fair held annually in Frankfurt, Germany, in which Credeal participates.
The company sells R$ 160 million (US$ 72 million) a year and 5% of this comes from the foreign market, with sales mostly to South and Central America. Credeal is also present in other parts of the world, apart from Lebanon, namely Angola, Portugal, Spain and Israel. Abroad, the factory ships products under its own brand and also adapts the items to customer requirements and manufactures under their brand. To Lebanon, for example, items are sold in both modalities. "We have a tremendous capacity to adapt," said the executive.
In Brazil, some Credeal articles are sold under the client’s brand name, as in Walmart, which sells items under their own brand. In government tenders, in turn, the products have no brand on them. The factory also works with licensed products of characters and idols like the Beatles and Iron Maiden, among others. Credeal creates a main collection for return to school at the beginning of the year, and a mini collection halfway through the year. What is currently being sold, according to Pavan, follows the 2014 trend, in which yellow has great predominance, due to the World Cup in Brazil.
Pavan says that copybooks and diaries are now fashionable items and reflect the personality of their owners. To show new creations to importers, every year the company travels to each of the countries it serves and presents the products and tendencies, followed by business roundtables, in which orders are placed. To some markets, Credeal sends professionals more than once a year, says Pavan.
Credeal is 41 years old and is a family business, now in the hands of the Alban family. In addition to copybooks and diaries, which are the flagship, the company also manufactures other school items. It has a capacity to produce simpler items, but the focus, according Pavan, is on products with higher added value. Production, which consumed 26,000 tons of paper last year, is carried out at a unit in the city of Serafina Corrêa, in the interior of Rio Grande do Sul state. In total, the organisation employs 400 people.
The company’s goal, according to Pavan, is to increase production by 2% to 3% in 2013. To the foreign market, there are plans to increase shipments by 20% this year. The export coordinator believes that the appreciated dollar will help the country sell, but the main focus for growth is the recent entry into two new markets in South America, Chile and Bolivia, where the company has key partnerships according to Pavan.
Contact:
Credeal
Phone: (+55 54) 3444 3550
E-mail: doani@credeal.com.br
Site: www.credeal.com.br
*Translated by Mark Ament
