Thiago Monteiro began his journey as an entrepreneur back in 2011 when he opened a cosmetics distributor on the São Paulo coast. At first, everything was simpler: he worked with a few exclusive brands and supplied beauty and personal care products. But it was during the pandemic that his life took a different turn. Like many, he had to reinvent himself and ended up diving headfirst into the digital world.
With commerce slowing down and customers hesitant to pay, Thiago decided to bet on e-commerce. He turned a cluttered room into a mini operations center, put his stock to work, and within three months, he was selling enough to cover all household expenses. That’s when he realized the online world had more potential than he could imagine.
Even though he was an ‘old-school’ businessman, more tied to offline operations, Thiago started sharing his digital experiences. This led him to search for a tool that would simplify managing his e-commerce store, which by then was selling everything: household items, toys, and children’s shoes.
In the beginning, the entire process was manual. He and his wife, Nathália, dedicated themselves to listing each product individually across various marketplaces like Mercado Livre and Shopee. They faced numerous challenges: inventory management was complex, systems didn’t integrate, and even shipping labels for mailed products had to be created individually.
In 2022, Thiago took a leap in his entrepreneurial journey by investing in technology. Searching for systems to help with these challenges, he found Magis5, an automation and integration platform with major marketplaces like Mercado Livre and Shopee.
“I was able to list all my products at once across all integrated marketplaces. I gained speed and visibility, which led to a boom in sales. Not to mention, all order-related processes became automated and centralized—from tracking order status to delivery, including sales management, invoicing, and issuing shipping documents and invoices.” ‘That’s how we went from an improvised little room to a high-performance e-commerce business,’ he highlights.
According to the merchant, the platform automates various manual tasks, such as ad and kit creation, inventory control, shipping, and financial management, while also providing detailed dashboards and increasing business efficiency and profitability.
“I remember how complicated inventory control was because the systems didn’t communicate with each other. Today, thanks to technology, everything is automated. Now I can manage my inventory easily and bulk-price different products much faster. All of this is so intuitive that even someone just starting in e-commerce can use it without difficulty,” he says.
This way, the time spent managing marketplaces was cut in half, allowing for better results with less effort. ‘We even reduced shipping errors, which were common without automated control. This also helped reduce logistics costs,’ he explains. Where three people were once needed to handle shipping and product sorting, he now manages everything with just one employee.
Between 2022 and 2024, the transformation was even more significant. The result? A revenue of R$400,000 per month with a much leaner and more efficient operation.
However, Thiago doesn’t want to stop there. He already has plans to launch his own brand, Tadebrinks, focused on children’s products like tights, bows, and rompers.
“Is it possible to run my business without a technology that integrates and automates management? It is, but it would require much larger investments and far more effort to manage processes that are now fully automated. With this solution, I gain time, reduce costs, and minimize errors—benefits that would be much harder to achieve otherwise,” he explains.
Even though Brazilian e-commerce is highly segmented, one thing is clear: being present on marketplaces can be decisive for a business. A study by BigDataCorp on the ‘Profile of Brazilian E-Commerce’ showed that almost half of online stores in the country (45.79%) are managed by just one person. Additionally, 40.47% have at most ten employees, usually between one and two.
In 2024, there are already over 1.9 million online stores in Brazil, a 17.14% increase from the previous year. Of these, 68.44% sell between one and ten products. These numbers show how the sector is growing but also reinforce the need to invest in technologies that help automate processes and empower small businesses to stand out in such a competitive market.
