RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Created less than two years ago by Matheus Pedroso, a 29-year-old business administrator from Rio Grande do Sul, Amazônia Hub has as its main objective to divulge Amazon products that, according to him, are little known by Brazilian people.
It also proposes to help with the bottlenecks faced by producers in the region, such as logistics and access to major consumer markets. Today the group is looking for an investor to be able to expand its operations.
The Amazônia Hub brings together, for now, 17 impact business startups, 12 of which already sell their products in its virtual store. All the goods are sent to São Paulo, and from there, they are checked, barcoded, and distributed.
The company is also in charge of marketing, integration, and other e-commerce platforms. Currently, the monthly sales average is R$ 15,000 and R$ 20,000.
All the suppliers of Amazônia Hub are from the region and operate with raw materials from the biodiversity. With the pandemic that arrived five months after the company was created, Amazônia Hub’s partners had to learn to tinker with systems, use social networks for sales and even use a bank account. “Pandemic caused the transition to digital to be accelerated,” says Pedroso.
The platform offers products from manufacturers in Amazonas, Mato Grosso, and Pará, including chocolate, spices, nuts, honey, dehydrated juices, flours, jellies, coffee, and cosmetics, all developed with natural raw materials.
Plants to process oil
Another work developed in partnership with local institutions is the training and installation of oil processing plants in communities that previously only sold the raw material for processing, such as andiroba and copaíba.
“We saw that many associations had the potential for production, but only sold the raw material in large quantities, without much quality, without adding value, and the price they received was meager,” says Pedroso.
The Amazônia Hub currently receives essential oils used in cosmetics, skin treatments, massages, and incense from four cooperatives that bring together more than a thousand riverside dwellers.
On sale are, for example, andiroba oil (for healing and anti-inflammatory purposes), coffee oil (helps in the production of collagen), breu oil (anxiolytic and aromatherapy), and copaiba oil (various applications).
Last week the Amazônia Hub delivered several products for a client from Virginia (USA). It also serves a Brazilian woman who lives in Florida. She has her own brand of cosmetics and uses the oils in creams and suntan lotions.
“There is a promising market outside Brazil to which we want to expand the business, but first we want to establish our operation for Brazilians and have sales scale”, says Pedroso.
Source: Estadão