The ghost of Mappin: Americanas Crisis recalls aspects of the bankruptcy of the famous São Paulo chain

If it were active, Mappin, the first department store in São Paulo, would be close to completing 110 years.

Opened in November 1913 in the center of São Paulo, the company grew stronger in the following decades thanks to expressive sales and rare prestige – it was the place to see and be seen. However, its epilogue in the 1990s was disheartening, marked by fraud and growing debt.

Especially for those over 40 years of age, the crisis that today strikes Lojas Americanas can refer to some extent to the turning off of the lights at Mappin, once a retail giant.

On Wednesday (11), executive Sergio Rial announced that he was leaving the command of Americanas just ten days after taking office and pointed out accounting problems at the company, involving R$ 20 billion related to debts with suppliers.

In 1996, businesswoman Cosette Alves, who had controlled Mappin since 1982, accepted a proposal from Ricardo Mansur, an outsider in the field of large retail, for an estimated market value of between US$ 20 and US$ 25 million.

At that point, the company was recording losses. “It was an extremely difficult period for the Brazilian economy. We had economic stagnation, inflation, high interest rates, we went through several stabilization plans. on the operational side,” Cosette told Sheet days after making the sale.

Mansur announced a new breath for the company, but what was seen was the opposite. Three years after the acquisition, the company was declared bankrupt. At that time, Mappin and Mesbla (another chain acquired by Mansur) owed around R$1.2 billion (R$9.4 billion in corrected values) to suppliers, banks, employees, investors, the Federal Revenue and state governments.

“At Mappin, the signs of fraud are blatant,” he told Sheet at the time, the lawyer Alexandre Carmona, liquidator of the bankrupt estate.

In 2011, Justice sentenced Mansur in two criminal cases to 11 and a half years in prison for fraudulent management at Mappin and at Banco Crefisul. Almost a decade later, the businessman began to serve house arrest.

Three years ago, a sign of recovery. Marabraz relaunched the Mappin brand, now in online commerce, focused on bed, table and bath products, in addition to decoration. It was a modest initiative compared to what the store had represented in the last century for the retail trade, but at least it kept the brand alive.

Today, however, the online address as it was launched (mappin.com.br) is inactive. The report contacted Marabraz’s marketing department, but did not receive a response by the time this text was completed.

‘Our Macy’s’

Mappin’s final years do not do justice to what the store represented for the economic and social life of São Paulo.

Opened by the British John Mappin and John Kitching at a time when the city’s population did not reach 400 thousand inhabitants, Mappin soon became a symbol of elegance, mainly for an elite linked to coffee (farmers and traders). The 1929 crisis, however, forced the store to adapt to a new scenario, diversifying its consumer public.

However, it maintained the aura of sophistication and identity with the expanding city. “When they were dating, in the 1940s, my parents had the entrance to Mappin as a meeting point”, says Jaime Troiano, director of TroianoBranding, a company dedicated to brand strategies.

When talking about the Mappin shop frequented by his parents, Troiano is referring to the art deco building in Praça Ramos de Azevedo, in front of Theatro Municipal, where the store moved in 1939. Before, it had occupied two other addresses: Rua 15 de Novembro, where it was inaugurated, and Praça do Patriarca.

“Mappin represented a look at the First World for people from São Paulo. It was our Macy’s”, says the consultant, citing the department store in New York, opened in 1858. He especially remembers the “spectacular Christmas windows”. .

“Mappin became a very strong reference for consumers, who went to the center of São Paulo to see launches and sales”, says Eugenio Foganholo, partner at retail consultancy Mixxer.

According to him, Ricardo Mansur helped to sink the company in the 1990s, but Mappin’s decline had begun two decades earlier.

To understand this process, says the consultant, it is necessary to take into account that retail formats have life cycles. “In Brazil, a format that lasted for a long time was the department store, in which, under a single roof, there was a very wide retail offer: furniture, shoes, clothes, food, appliances, among many others”.

In the 1970s, new retail practices began to gain traction that challenged department stores. There are three main formats that have overturned the pieces of this retail chess, according to Foganholo: 1) specialized chains, such as C&A (apparel) and G. Aronson (appliances); 2) malls, such as Iguatemi and Ibirapuera; 3) hypermarkets, such as Carrefour.

“These are transformations that started to undermine the department stores”, says the consultant. “From there, retail began to move from the center of São Paulo to the radial areas, taking the flow from Mappin”.

Foganholo presents this panorama to highlight the differences between the crises of Mappin, which went bankrupt, and of Americanas, whose future is uncertain. In the first case, there was a new retail context, which led to the decline of the store – and Mansur just buried it. In the second, the situation is, according to him, punctual: “Businesses like Americanas are growing, they have no tendency to disappear”.

Crisis goes, crisis comes, trade can close. But brands, when strong, are capable of resisting, believes Troiano. “Mansur’s actions affected Mappin as a business, but they didn’t change the idyllic image we keep of the store”, says the consultant, who concludes: “It’s nostalgia”.