São Paulo – The Brazilian pool manufacturer iGUi Piscinas is active on the Arab market. It has a franchisee in Jordan and ships product to Morocco and Egypt via its plant in Portugal. The shop in Jordan is run by a local entrepreneur and opened roughly six months ago. The owner also plans on setting up an iGUi plant in the Arab country, which should help increase the brand’s foothold in the Arab world, its international director Marcelo Pazos told ANBA.
There are 45 iGUi plants around the world, including four in Argentina, two in Mexico and one in Portugal. Another plant is set to open in Paraguay next August, according to Pazos. All plants are license holders and twenty-two of them make actual pools; the rest make other equipment and ancillary items.
It makes 25,000 to 30,000 pools, 80% of which are sold in Brazil. Exports are not the primary focus, but the company is working on expanding. “Exports from our Mexico plant alone increased by 25% to 30% last year, and this year should see even bigger growth,” the director claims; Pools by iGUi are sold in 30-plus countries, with Argentina being the top buyer.
The company was founded in 1995 and has exported since its inception, but sales to Arab countries only began recently. Morocco and Egypt have been buying for two years. iGUi only broke into the Jordanian market more recently. Pazos says a Jordanian entrepreneur was in Brazil last week and expressed interest in opening a plant, although no dates have been set yet.
Pazos believes that having pool manufacturing operations in Jordan could vastly increase the brand’s foothold in the region, because products won’t have to be shipped from such distance. Talks are underway for another plant in India, which is close to the Middle East and could also serve the region, according to the director.
The executive says that iGUi has established a lot of contacts in the Arab world, in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. “Our product suits any place, we didn’t modify the product’s structure, it’s the same, and this facilitates trading. We have a lot of contacts in the region and I believe we will have strong growth there and, if we open a plant, could expand even more”, he says.
Pazos says that the company worked hard to export, with participations in international fairs and constant prospecting and business trips.
iGUi manufactures home pools, both to single homes and private condominiums. The largest pool manufactured measures 10 meters in length, with the smallest measuring three meters in length by 2 meters in width, with 90 centimeters in depth. All of the pools are made of fiberglass.
The company was founded by Filipe Sisson in Gravataí, Rio Grande do Sul, his home state. However, currently the central office is located in Cedral, 443 km from São Paulo. Last year, the company registered BRL 509.1 million (USD 150.82 million) in revenues in Brazil and BRL 81.4 million (USD 24.11 million) abroad. Also in 2015, it was named as the most internationalized franchise by the ranking of Fundação Dom Cabral. The company has 800 franchises. From these, 540 are of conventional stores, and the others are mini-franchises, focused on pool maintenance.
iGUi Piscinas
Website: www.igui.com.br
Phone: +55 (17) 3266-9977
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum and Sérgio Kakitani