An American in Rio

Last week devout Brazilian toymakers thanked their patron saint and a U. S. businessman as they delivered 250,000 toys to Lojas Americanas, Brazil's best-known variety chain. It was the biggest order they had ever received from jolly, pink-faced Jim Marshall. Born in the Scranton coal belt, Jim Marshall is no Yankee fireball. Eschewing the impatient, hardheaded methods of most "dollar diplomats," he has for twelve years been just as friendly, almost as easygoing, as his customers. Result: he is the No. 1 storekeeper for Brazil's masses.

Jim got his first whiff of Brazil while on vacation from the Woolworth store he managed in Atlantic City. Back in the States, he continued to dream of Rio de Janeiro's Guanabara Bay. He also had another reverie : a chain of low-price stores in Brazil. Woolworth, he knew, would never send him there; the chain had investigated South America as a market, rejected it. Jim threw up his 15-year job, arrived in Rio on Washington's birthday, 1929, with two partners and $200,000.

When Jim struck Rio, its stores were all called magasins, catered to the self-conscious trade. And as in Manhattan when John Wanamaker moved there in 1896, Rio shoppers in 1929 rarely saw price tags; they were accustomed to haggling. Jim called his company Lojas Americanas be cause loja means shop in Portuguese. He opened it on June 1, 1929. Opening-hour gawkers timidly approached the unfamiliar narrow counters, laden with cheap trinkets, household goods, gewgaws. Prices were marked, and signs said "Look What One Milreis Will Buy." The gawkers did not buy. Then, one and a half hours after opening, a seven-year-old girl broke the ice, bought a 2 milreis doll. The cash register has been banging ever since.

His first store a success, Jim quickly opened two more, bought a warehouse. But the warehouse cut a profitable ten-a-year turnover to a dubious five. When the depression caught Jim, he soberly explained: "We put on long pants before we had short ones." He rounded up a group of U. S. and Brazilian rich men, reorganized in 1932. After the reshuffle his two pals were out, a Brazilian was president, Jim technical manager--and the largest stockholder. The new company soon pulled out of the red, paid its first dividend (2%) in 1934. And 10,000 shares of Lojas 7% "guaranteed" stock, which Jim could not sell in 1929, now pays a fat 12%.

An American, Jim Marshall is a better Brazilian than many natives. Of his 1,000 employes, only six are Americans; most are youthful (16 to 20), nattily uniformed girls. Unlike many merchants, Jim welcomed Brazil's recent 240 milreis ($12.36) monthly minimum wage laws because he knows Brazil--and especially Lojas--needs larger public purchasing power. Originally, 90% of his wares came from the U. S. or Europe. But Lojas financed many a backroom Brazilian factory; now 75% of its goods are homegrown, and many a Lojas-squired factory now sells all over Brazil. Some of them have even begun to cast eyes on the world trinket markets once dominated by Czecho-Slovakia and other European countries.

Having revolutionized Brazil's shopping habits, Jim Marshall has also cracked Brazilian society. Sunday afternoon Jim serves gin and tonic to his friends in his big 15-room home at swanky Ipanema Beach.

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