Let's learn about the story of Paulo Eduardo de O. Andrade, a great representative of the Brazilian refrigeration market and the Professional of the month of this edition.
by Duván Chaverra Agudelo
Paulo Eduardo de O. Andrade is an active athlete who was led by fate to be part of the refrigeration systems team. He has been a professional for 15 years and currently serves as the sales and marketing director of Heatcfraft Brazil.
Paulo is married to Daniela and has two sons: Adriano, 9, and Eduardo, 7. He has a degree in International Trade and a postgraduate degree in Business Management from the Getulio Vargas Foundation, FGV. Her professional life began at McQuay in Brazil, six months before Heatcraft bought her. The funny thing is that before entering the industry he was a professional volleyball player and lived from this sport until he was 25 years old.
To date, he actively practices the sport and considers himself a very competitive person: "In São José de los Campos I play regular football and tennis championships. I love the beach and when I go home with my family I spend the weekend playing beach volleyball with friends and with my wife (who was also a player before becoming an orthodontist)."
In addition to sports, he also shares unforgettable moments with his family and has other hobbies: "I am in love with my children, like almost all parents, and I always accompany them in their sports. I love to travel, especially to the United States and I am a frustrated guitarist, I say this because I am fond of Blues, Rock and everything that has a well played guitar. In addition, I am unhappily a fan of Palmeiras and I say unhappily because being the biggest winner of Brazilian championships (8 titles), this year we are in the B".
Paulo has climbed different positions at Heatcraft: "I had a rapid rise within the company. I started in 1998, with the acquisition of Heatcraft in the same year, I went on to report directly to Lennox International of Miami. The general manager of this operation is still Victor Mora. In 2001 I went on to report directly to Brazil and in 2003 I became an export sales manager. In this period we developed our entire network of distributors in South America. In 2005 I was given the challenge of managing the national market and for three years I accumulated the two functions. In 2008 I became director of sales and marketing of all Heatcraft operations in Brazil.
Your challenges and professional expectations
Our Professional of the Month knows that to get ahead in the Brazilian market you must work very hard and thus meet the goals or even exceed them, for this you need a lot of dedication and perseverance.
"My main professional challenge is to take Heatcraft to other levels of sales and development. Grow more and more in the value-added market, that is, industrial and everything that is related to large-scale projects. The Brazilian market, if it is not the most competitive I know, is one of the most difficult in the world, there are several manufacturers, the prices are very low, the certifying companies are still starting in our segment and therefore, we have to be very precise and at the same time aggressive to continue growing. In personal life, the biggest challenge is to find the balance between family and work, this is a great challenge today, "said the guest.
To achieve that leadership, Paulo knows that work starts from the heart of the company and therefore, dealing with customers and employees is key. "As professional as our market may be, people buy from people and therefore we are always looking for a transparent, professional and friendly relationship with our customers. With regard to collaborators, I always seek to be close to everyone with an open dialogue. I am a simple person in the deal and who values people very much within a corporation. As much as a company may have robust processes and procedures, I believe that even people make a difference. I believe that not only Heatcraft, but also the other manufacturers have an obligation to further professionalise our refrigeration market. Unfortunately we have a lot of informality or lack of processes in South America," said the guest.
This has given Paulo the necessary recognition within an industry as large and important as the cold industry in Brazil. "I think the recognition is given for the work developed and for the position we occupy in the South American market. In the last four years we grew by 60% as a company and 30% of our annual turnover always comes from new products (new products for us is something launched in the last 3 years)."
However, the Professional of the Month does not have enough words to give credit to his work group: "The greatest pride I have in this trajectory are my sales, marketing and customer service teams. I have no doubt that we have the most professional and strong commercial team in the market allied with a marketing and product development department that was recognized within Heatcraft Worldwide, as the best in the group."
Your vision of the sector in Brazil
For Heatcraft's director of sales and marketing, Brazil is a country that has exceeded its limits by taking advantage in the last decade with respect to the rest of Latin America. Still, the country has several challenges ahead.
"The Brazilian market has had a very strong advance in the last 10 years with a growth in some lines of more than 300%, such as hermetic condensing units. I think the biggest challenge of the refrigeration industry in Brazil is convincing customers to buy better cooling solutions and not lower prices. We have several examples of companies looking for cold quality in the first place, but unfortunately the vast majority still want low prices."
Finally, the Professional of the Month, considers that the Chinese market is an obstacle to the development of the Western company. "I think the big threat to the Surameriacana industry is Chinese products. Of course there are products of excellent quality, but we see some that are quite the opposite and that are entering our market with prices many times better than the raw materials that form the prices of our products. The great variation in change is also something that hurts industries a lot, it is very difficult to say if a low or high change is the best but I surely say that a stable change is the best for everyone, since it allows everyone to have a clearer economic outlook and work better their forecasts. "
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