Flávio Jansen is one of the co-founders of the e-commerce site Submarino.com, popularly known as Submarino. In addition, he is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the Brazilian Chamber of Digital Economy and also of the Locaweb Company.
Jansen graduated in Electrical Engineering with an emphasis in Electronics from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-RJ) in the 1980s. Later, between 1997 and 1999, he served as Director of Technology and Operations (CTO) of Mandic
In the same year he left Mandic, Flávio Jansen helped start what would become his biggest project in the area of e-commerce, the website Submarino.com. Learn more about the history of this entrepreneur and about Submarino.com soon. Keep reading!
FLÁVIO JANSEN AND HIS TRAJECTORY IN THE SUBMARINE
In 1999, more than ten years after graduating in Engineering, Flávio Jansen founded the e-commerce site Submarino.com together with his partners Antonio Bonchristiano and Marcelo Ballona. In the beginning, the entrepreneurs bought Booknet and transformed it into TBL S/A, a company that would soon be renamed Submarino.com.
At the beginning of the project, Flávio Jansen and his partners began to invest in the production of content about books and CDs, among other products. Thus, they were able to increase brand visibility and generate more and more purchases. In 2003, to give you an idea, Submarino e-commerce already had more than 1 million customers and earned R$211 million.
In an interview with E-commerce Brasil in 2015, Jansen said that in 1999 he and his partners had to deal with installment payments and, in addition, discovered fraud in e-commerce. Since e-commerce via the internet had only existed for 4 years, almost everything was new. Therefore, nothing worked perfectly. But according to Jansen, there was room for error, as there were no benchmarks.
Flávio Jansen says that hiring employees was not based on experience, but on potential. He reveals that he hired collaborators much more because of their willingness to carry out a project. In this context, he preferred people who were not afraid of making mistakes.
Between 1999 and 2002, Jansen held the position of CTO of Submarino.com. In 2003, however, he took over as the company's CEO. In 2006, after the merger of Submarino with Americanas, the entrepreneur became the co-CEO of the resulting company, B2W, a position in which he remained until 2007. In 2013, he became the CEO of Locaweb, following other ways from then on.
THE POWER OF THE SUBMARINE TODAY
The merger with Americanas, which resulted in the creation of B2W, made Submarino.com one of the largest e-commerce websites in Brazil and Latin America. In 2021, Submarino was 12th on Conversion's list of most accessed websites in the country.
In 2018, B2W achieved revenue of $15 billion. The following year, in 2019, it was valued at $17,3 billion. In addition to Submarino.com and Americanas, B2W has other brands such as Shoptime and Soubarato, for example.
It is worth remembering, finally, that throughout his career, Flávio Jansen, co-founder of Submarino.com, became vice president of the Brazilian Chamber of Digital Economy and director of Digipix, Lojas Quero Quero and Grupo IBMEC.
As soon as you can, click on “ Werner Otto ” and learn about the biography of the founder of the Otto Group, one of the largest e-commerce companies in the world today!
