Mario Ricardo Farias Gomes
Mario Ricardo Farias Gomes was born in 1956, in Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil, the second child of Mario Cardoso Gomes, a director of the State Bank of Amazonas, and Derly Faria Gomes, who had given up studying law to be a mother and housewife. Precocious and energetic, Mario grew up in a middle-class home in what was then a rather provincial, torpid and remote state capital in equatorial northern Brazil in the center of the gigantic Amazon rain forest.
Mario was an avid and talented student from the start of his formal education, and was always restless for activity and challenge. In 1967, Manaus was designated a free trade zone by the Brazilian government and a package of attractive financial incentives was offered to certain industries to establish manufacturing operations there. Overnight the sleepy river-port city was transformed into a hustling and bustling boomtown which it remains to this day (in 2006, over US$20 billion worth of goods were manufactured there). A year later, 12 year-old Mario, sensing a golden opportunity and with the help of his father, started importing electric slide projectors and selling them to small retail stores in Manaus. He thereafter expanded his product line to include other small consumer electronics. Mario had discovered his vocational identity - a natural-born entrepreneur!
At 15, Mario participated in a student exchange program whereby he spent a year going to high school in Wyoming, Michigan, and U.S.A. Living with a host family he became acquainted with American culture and consolidated his English language skills. He loved it all, from pancakes to snow skiing (no such thing in tropical Amazonas) to TV sit-coms. He continues to stay in contact with surviving members of his host family and his best school buddy of the time, Mark Hartman, who, after high school, went on to West Point and is today a general in the U.S. Army.
Back home, Mario reached university age and decided to study law. He gained admittance into The Federal University of Amazonas School of Law, the second oldest law school in Brazil. He excelled in his studies, was elected class president, and graduated at the top of his class in 1978 as that year's Valedictorian. The next year, he passed the Brazilian Bar Exam on his first try with the highest score of any examinee in Manaus and received his license to practice law. Just 23 years-old, Mario was now Doctor Mario Ricardo Farias Gomes in accordance with Brazilian nomenclature.
Taking a break after the Bar Exam, Mario made the grand tour of Europe and spent three months in France studying French. He kept up his practice in the ensuing years and is today fluent in French, his third language after Portuguese and English. In a pinch, he can also get by in Spanish.
Coming home, instead of setting up a law practice, he opened a bakery, Brazilians love their bread and in Brazil, bread means FRESH bread. Every morning millions of Brazilians make their way to the corner bakery to buy it. The process is repeated in the evening. Since man does not live on bread alone, they usually also pick up some butter, ham, cheese, coffee, milk, and maybe a coffee cake, all of which Mario kept well stocked. A good bakery in Brazil can turn a tidy profit. There are a lot of well-off bakery owners in Brazil. Of course, Mario knew this so he rolled up his sleeves and put his hands in the dough, so to speak. Up each morning at 3:00am to see that the product was coming out of the ovens, he was off in his van by 5:30 to deliver bread to commercial customers while his employees minded the retail counter at the home base. He soon expanded the bakery to include a catering kitchen and landed a contract to supply a company with 125 breakfasts, lunches and dinners five days a week. This business grew steadily as Mario acquired new clients, principally electronics factories in the Manaus Industrial District. By the time he sold the business in 1997, to Puras International, French multinational, it was preparing and serving as many as 25000 meals per day.
In 1988, while dining on fish at the La Barca restaurant in Manaus, Mario met a charming and very pretty young lady, Naybe Lents. It was love at first sight, for Mario at least, and he immediately set about with his usual daring and determination courting her. Some of his friends thought he was engaged in a lost cause. A herd of young Manaus bachelors had their eyes on Naybe. She was much too beautiful for Mario. Well, today Mario and Naybe split their time between Miami and Manaus along with their two daughters, Maite and Mariah.
In the mid-90s, Mario expanded into other retail food service areas. He brought the first Bob`s fast food franchise (the second largest in Brazil after MacDonald`s) to the north of Brazil which he opened in the Amazonas Shopping Center.
A little earlier, Mario had gone international but in a completely different direction. Just as he had inherited a lawyerly bent from his mother, he took a bit of the banker from his father. He bought himself an apartment in Miami Beach, Fla. and started Support Financial, a factoring company. He recruited a local bank manager, John White, to join him and run the day-by-day operations. Starting small with a conservative approach to making accounts receivable collateralized loans, the business increased each year and today has clients nationwide. It worked out so well, in fact, that Mario decided to get into the same line back home in Manaus. In 1998, he started Rio Claro Trust and Receivables which is today one of the largest and most respected factoring companies in the north of Brazil. Its management is now in the hands of Mario`s long-time right hand woman, Elizabeth Coelho. Mario is a member in good standing of The National Association of Factoring of Brazil, as well as The National Syndicate of Factoring, and he has served as the Vice-President of the former and President of the latter. He is also a director of The Commercial Association of Amazonas, an organization along the lines of The American Chamber of Commerce, and an active Rotarian in the Manaus Chapter of The International Rotary Club.
The year 2000 found Mario's various enterprises thriving. He was now 44 and financially set - time to kick back a little. But that is not Mario. When he learned that The Getulio Vargas Foundation from Sao Paulo, one of Brazil's finest graduate schools of business and finance, was offering the very first MBA program in Manaus, he jumped. With all his practical, real-life experience in business, he probably should have been teaching the course. Indeed, the other students in the program constantly sought him out for assistance and advice. Nonetheless, he assumed the role of student again with enthusiasm and intense interest. In 2001, he completed the program with the top honors and added one more title of academic distinction at the end of his name, Master of Business Administration.
Somehow with all his businesses to oversee, a family to care for, and the heavy work load of an MBA course, Mario found the time and energy to get started in yet another totally different type of business. He and two partners began The Platinum Construction Company in 2000. Manaus was growing fast and the demand for mid to upper price range residential, high rise apartments there was outstripping the supply. Ever with the eye for opportunity, Mario went for it. 100% capitalized with Mario`s and his partners` money, not a borrowed penny from a bank, investor or stockholder, PLATINUM bought land, contracted architects, designers, engineers, tradesmen - everything needed - and started building. Since then, Platinum has emerged as one of the principal players in Manaus residential real estate development with over 1000 units completed and sold to-date. It recently launched a luxury condo project in Boa Vista, the capital of the Brazilian state of Roraima, which lies north of Amazonas. There are several new projects on the drawing boards at Platinum including a large scale tract home development.
What is next for Mario? Whatever it may be, you can be sure that whether Mario is at his lovely home in Manaus, cruising the Amazon River in his yacht, enjoying a cigar and scotch on-the-rocks on his beachfront apartment balcony with a panoramic view of the Atlantic Ocean in Miami, or skiing the slopes of the Swiss Alps, he is contemplating some new, ambitious enterprise.
New Guestbook
Like this lens? Want to share your feedback, or just give a thumbs up? Be the first to submit a blurb!
