Women Entrepreneurs GROW Global

Out of all entrepreneurs in Brazil, 53% are women and 47% are men.  They have the most entrepreneurs among the G-20 nations after China. One of the country’s big challenges is to get more companies aiming to export.

According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) Brazil study:

15.3% of the country’s population have their own business, a rate second only to China’s.

What’s also noteworthy in the study is this:

Start-up enterprises have gone from 2.93% of the total in 2008 to 5.78% in 2009, of which 4.3% are enterprises out of opportunity.

When it comes to foreign trade:

89.5% of Brazilian entrepreneurs claimed that they do not plan on exporting. Paulo Okamoto, president of the Sebrae (English here), considers that this is not a good scenario for the country and claims that action is needed for Brazilian companies to internationalize themselves.

“It is desirable for Brazil to have more companies aiming to export. For such, we need to foster innovation and we need more sophisticated, higher quality products. The Sebrae is also developing programs in order to provide ongoing support to exporting companies.

According to Okamoto, there are now roughly 15,000 small businesses that already export, and the goal for 2010 is to increase that figure by 10%.

For the first time in a decade in which the GEM survey is conducted in Brazil, the number of women has exceeded the rate of male entrepreneurs. And here’s a good case study of a young woman entrepreneur, without any international experience, exporting her concept to the U.S.A.

Businesswoman Vanessa Carmona, currently 36 years old, established her business at age 23. With lots of creativity and work, Vanessa and her partner Flávia Almeida, then aged 32, opened the Mulata Brasil beachwear store, and turned a start-up capital of 5,000 Brazilian reals (US$ 2,800) into revenues currently exceeding 1.4 million reals (US$ 796,000).

The brand, which started out in a small 57-square-metre house, now has two shops in a wealthy area of São Paulo. Despite never having exported, it should open its first unit abroad in the first half of 2010, in Miami, United States.

Read the entire article here.

Photo credit:  Mulata Brasil as mentioned above; this is one of entrepreneur Vanessa Carmona’s swimsuit styles at her company!

Posted by:  Laurel Delaney