A Business Traveler's Memories of Brazil

Posted by Administrator on 2/4/2012 to Articles

In the late 1990s, I traveled to Sao Paulo several times. At the time, the great experiment with privatization was ending and local markets were increasingly being opened to foreign investment. My firm had been engaged by a couple of Brazilian companies to help outsource their telecommunications business to a European carrier.

Invariably, the Brazilians would give us little notice - for anything. We usually got a call on Friday or Saturday asking us to be in Sao Paulo on Monday. At the time, we still relied on travel agencies to book our flights and they would move mountains to find us tickets. The upside, however, was that we discovered TAM, a Brazilian airline with impeccable service. The flight attendants, all beautiful women who wore pillbox hats and tailored suits, would treat us to an old fashioned meal service that started with caviar and ended with a glass of port.

The pleasantries would end when we arrived in Sao Paulo. It would take an hour or two to clear customs, plus another hour or two of stop and go traffic to get into the city. A quick stop at the hotel to change into our suits and then off to the lawyers' offices where we would work.

Once at the lawyers' offices, which were in an old coffee baron's mansion, the pace of life again became more civilized. Our host was a jovial attorney from an old Portuguese family. He would take us to lunch as this tennis club every day and his staff would keep our conference room stocked with cookies and coffee. That was important because we would usually work well past midnight and needed the provisions to keep up with the frantic pace of business.

The work itself ranged from chaotic meetings with dozens of accountants and IT managers seated in two rows along a twenty foot conference table to more intimate and civil conversations with the Brazilian attorneys regarding the tax implications of laws that hadn't even been passed. It was a transitional time for Brazil, with the government loosening its grip on the economy but without a clear path forward. Don't get me wrong, though. The professionals with whom we worked in Brazil were as smart, educated and skilled as any with whom I have worked with in the United States or Europe. It was just that the environment at the time was challenging because it was changing quickly.

Our deal ended with a sprint of twenty hour days and a victory party with champagne. I remember limping back to the hotel at 10 p.m. and heading out to the sushi joint down the street for our last dinner in town. A large Japanese community in Sao Paulo ensured that our fish and sake were excellent. I remember sitting across from my boss, drinking cold sake, and talking about catching the afternoon flight back home because we deserved a break after working until 4 a.m. for a week. Of course, I saw him at breakfast early the next morning. I guess our bodies had been so used to the abuse that we work up early anyway.

Many years later, through circumstances that require a long story, I started doing business with the folks who make Copag cards. My impressions of Copag were the same as my earlier impressions: smart, educated and skilled individuals focused on growing their business. But this time, they were dealing with a new challenge: the U.S. market for playing cards.