Fabiana Araújo, a former makeup vender, starts her own beauty business and school and sees revenue grow five fold

Another member of Brazil’s Class C economic class invests and becomes entrepreneur

With investment in small business, they get top billing. Former secretary and former purchasing manager bill more than $100 thousand per month.

More than half of small business owners are from Brazil’s economic Class C. The improvement of the population’s income in recent years made ​​a comeback in the market.

The businesswoman Fabiana Araújo began her professional life at age 15, as an office assistant, but wanted to have a business of her own. “I think that this is what motivates us to wake up every day, to have a reason, a dream. Why will I get up? Because I have a dream to go after. And (what’s) better than a dream, is to achieve it,” says the businesswoman.

Fabiana had several other jobs. She was a seller of cosmetics, computers, supervisor and manager of a franchise of courses in beauty. In 2011, she lost her job, but the opportunity arose to buy the school where he had worked. She didn’t have even 10% of the value of the business, but she made a move: she took R$10,000 from her Fundo de Garantia do Tempo de Serviço (FGTS) (1) and parceled out the remaining R$165,000 in two years.

With no other source of income, the only place where she could get money was the school itself, which was in bad shape. It was disorganized, with few students and was operating in the red.

Fabiana trained staff, improved the content of the classes and customer service. As she was from the C economic class, she knew very well the needs of the public that she served. “Today the people of class C want (a good) price, however they want either differentiated service, so this was a greater need. We joke that they want to be treated like a king,” she says.

What looked like a bad investment turned into a good business. In one year, the number of employees increased from two to 25 and the number of students increased from 77 to 500. Revenue grew five fold and the school became a source of pride for the franchiser’s network.

“A person who was an employee of a franchise and accumulates capital, buys, invest in a business and turn it into a unit that grossed R$20 thousand to R$100 thousand in less than 6 months is really great competency that makes us admire this person very much,” said franchiser Paul Tanoue.

School offers 14 vocational courses

Fabiana’s school offers 14 vocational courses such as hairdressing, makeup, manicure and pedicure.

“Today the space is getting smaller for the demand by the students, we have an increase this year of at least 30%, so we’re looking for another space, more classrooms, because here it was already small,” she says.