Magazine Luiza


Magazine Luiza, or Magalu, is one of the largest Brazilian retail companies together with GPA, Viavarejo, Lojas Americanas and others. The company is owned by Brazilian billionaire Luiza Trajano and family.
Currently the company has more than 1001 stores and 9 distribution centers. The company offers 10 thousand items in their stores, and at the end of 2018, its online marketplace hosted more than 3,300 vendors offering a combined total of 4.3 million products. The company reported annual sales of $220 million USD from its online marketplace for 2018. The company is also one of the largest e-commerce companies of Brazil, competing with B2W and Via Varejo.

History

The company was founded in 1957 in Franca.
In 1992, Magalu launched its first “virtual” stores, which at the time were physical retail outlets equipped with multimedia ordering kiosks. There are 162 Magalu stores in Brazil today with such kiosks still in use. In 2000, Frederico Trajano, a third-generation Luiza and the company’s current CEO, joined the company to direct the launch of its ecommerce division. Trajano told Forbes in 2019 that he joined the company with “a simple philosophy to do an omnichannel strategy,” involving ecommerce orders that could be shipped directly to consumers or picked up at physical Magalu retail outlets.
In January 2016, Frederico Trajano became Magazine Luiza’s CEO.