Casas Bahia

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Casas Bahia is a in Brazilian retail chain which specializes in furniture and home appliances. It was founded in 1957 in São Caetano do Sul, São Paulo, by Polish immigrant Samuel Klein ^[1], who began his career as a peddler selling products to immigrants from the Brazilian Northeast. As of 2004, the company employed 22,000 people and was generating $2 billion in profits^[2]. By 2006, it had more than 500 stores in eight states (São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais, Paraná, Santa Catarina, Rio Grande do Sul, Goiás and Mato Grosso do Sul), besides the Federal District.

Casas Bahia, unlike many of its competitors, does not rely on an internet presence as a cornerstone of its strategy -- the company website only contains brick-and-mortar addresses and company history and news.

Rather, Casas Bahia makes the majority of its profit by charging interest on installment plan purchases, making it possible for low-income customers to purchase products which they would not be able to pay off in a single payment.

Another sales technique of the store is to locate cashiers in the back of the store, which requires clients to pass by all the products on the floor each month in order to pay their next monthly payment. Salespeople also consider the lines at the cashiers appropriate potential sales targets (which they refer to as bocas de caixa "open cashiers").

^ International Directory of Company Histories, Volume 75 (2004) by Robert Halasz
^ Allen L. Hammond, C.K. Prahalad, Selling to the Poor, Foreign Policy, May/June 2004