Casa do Construtor opens 600th rental location

Casa do Construtor, the Brazilian tool rental franchise business, has opened its 600th location in Brazil in June and is now adding further international locations.

The 600th store is in Fortaleza, in Ceará state in Northeastern Brazil.

Alexandre Forjaz (left), president of Brazilian rental association ALEC, with Bruno Arena, franchise coordinator of Casa do Construtor in Brazil, pictured at the IRE exhibition in Maastricht. (Photo: IRN)

Bruno Arena, franchise coordinator who has worked at the business for 15 years, told IRN that the company has been growing at very high rates; “In the last five years we have experienced 20% growth per year. We’ve opened 300 stores in the last three years.”

The stores rent small tools and equipment - and no ‘yellow line’ machines – with around 65% of customers being private individuals and the rest professional customers. A typical franchise holder will have three stories and the largest has 64.

“We have 90 more openings in the pipeline”, said Arena, who was speaking to IRN at the IRE exhibition in Maastricht.

“We love the business and love the relationships we have with the franchise holders. If they are successful, we are successful.”

Arena said he could imagine that the upper limit for the network in Brazil could be 1000 locations, but the business is now also targeting neighbouring countries.

Five years ago it started a push into Paraguay and Uruguay, and now has five locations in each. In the coming months it will open its first three locations in Colombia, starting in Bogota.

“It’s an opportunity to develop rental further, but also part of our diversification strategy”, he told IRN, “Our goal is to be the largest rental company in Latin America, in general tools, not in yellow line equipment.”

Arena visited IRE with Alexandre Forjaz, the president of Brazilian rental association ALEC (see picture above). Arena is scheduled to succeed Forjaz as ALEC’s president next year.