Marcelo Claure’s key seems simple: arrive at the right place at the right time. These virtues explain the dizzying growth of Brightstar, the cellular telephone distributor that Claure launched in October 1997, when the penetration of this service was still below 10% in Latin America. The later explosion of cellular telephony was like manna from heaven for a company that operates at every link in the chain, from personalizing the device models for the different countries to delivering them to the operating companies.
With this recipe, Claure is still taking interest ten years later. Today, his main advantage lies in scale. With alliances with Motorola, Samsung and Nokia, among other large manufacturers, it has sufficient critical mass to offer low costs and fast delivery to operators. That menu is fattening up Claure’s business. Brightstar’s sales last year were about US$3.5 billion, seven times more than in 2001. And the company is playing in 49 countries, a leap compared to its 16 country presence just three years ago. Such growth has 36 year old Claure more in the clouds than on the ground. “I divide the month into four weeks: I spend one in Latin America, another in the United States, and the rest in Europe and Asia,” says Claure. “But weekends are sacred: I always spend them with my wife and my children.”
In 2007 Brightstar raised nearly US$800mn in capital and fi nancing to accelerate its global expansion.Next year, Claure’s travels will have another two destinations marked in red: Russia and China. With fresh cash in the form of US$283 million added in July 2007, by the U.S. investment firm Lindsay Goldberg--who was left with 25% of Brightstar--Claure wants to gain ground in those markets to keep pushing their sales up, which in 2008 are forecast to reach US$6 billion. “One of Brightstar’s keys to moving forward is the great financial strength it has to occupy a space in the market of vendor services, equipment and other services,” says Wally Swain, Yankee Group analyst in Bogota.
To reach the 2008 sales goal will not only depend on the expansion into new large markets. Claure’s big gamble passes through expected interest in distributing the US$100 computer, the product of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab. The distribution of this economical PC is already generating new contracts, such as the one Claure reached with the government of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to distribute a million computers in Brazil.
The hundred dollar PC also allowed Claure to strengthen ties with the president of his country, Evo Morales, with whom he says he has a good relationship. The closeness opened the expectation of a political future for Claure in some sectors. But, he ruled it out. “I’m not interested; in general entrepreneurs that have gone into politics didn’t mount good campaigns,” he says. Anyway, Claure prefers to maintain his ties with Bolivia through other initiatives. In addition to an agreement with the Morales government to set up a small cellular telephone assembly plant, Claure is finalizing negotiations to buy a soccer club in Bolivia, one of his great passions
Together with these personal challenges, Claure proposes to continue with the Brightstar diversification process. “The new challenge is to stop being a wireless telephone distribution company to become a company that continually diversifies its portfolio,” he says. For this, in addition to entering into the computing business, it became associated last August with U.S. company Skinit- -a company that personalizes consumer electronic devices--and took a small share percentage of InPhonics, a wireless equipment distributor. Different paths to arrive at the right place at the right time.
