Luxury goods brand Daslu will go up for auction in May

The loot from the bankruptcy of Sao Paulo’s luxury sanctuary, Daslu, will be auctioned off at an event to be held on May 11.

The main claim of Sodré Santoro, who is in charge of the auction, is that someone is interested in the name Daslu and is trying to save his privileged aura.

But experts heard by Estadão are split on whether this “resurrection” is possible.

Auction promoter Sodré Santoro has experience maintaining legacy brands: it was the company that sold Mappin to the Marabraz chain in 2010. Shut down in 1999, Mappin has been a small e-commerce operation since 2019.

For auctioneer Mariana Sodré Santoro Batochio, Daslu comes with the advantage of being seen as “the brand that opens the door to Brazil for most international brands” at the time of sale.

The sales process of the Daslu brand is currently open on the auction company’s website and will only be carried out online. The winner of the highest bid will be announced on the 11th.

Auctioneers understand that while the Daslu brand is part of a group that has gone through hardship and legal battles, it is not necessarily “contaminated” by these issues.

Date

Created by businesswoman Eliana Tranchesi, who died in 2012, Daslu has been flying high for more than a decade, starting in the 1990s.

At a time when international luxury brands had practically no presence in Brazil, Daslu offered clients not only access but also exclusive services in a “mistress’s house” style – with saleswomen in uniform and treating consumers, where they often spent their afternoons. in the store, as if in a São Paulo mansion.

“I once broke the heel of my shoe and had to go to Daslu’s in the afternoon,” recalls brand expert Ana Couto, as visitors felt at home while browsing the store and choosing parts not only for salespeople but also for other customers.

“Daslu had a consulting direction that luxury brands have followed to this day. But other aspects are dated, starting with the uniforms. ”

For Ana Couto, if any company decides to acquire the Daslu brand, it will be necessary to undertake complex restructuring work to take advantage of exclusivity and service but eliminate those that no longer work.

In addition, while positioning Daslu, it should be taken into account that today’s shopping mall chains such as Iguatemi and Cidade Jardim offer dozens of luxury brands to consumers, a scenario very different from the one seen in the 1990s.

For Ana, this will be difficult for anyone who wants to invest in the rebuilding of Daslu. “Just being a multi-brand store isn’t going to work.”

Scandal

However, the difficulties of the eventual new owner of the Daslu brand are not limited to market problems as the company is also going through a long and visible reputational crisis.

In fact, Daslu’s castle began to fall apart in 2005, shortly after the opening of Villa Daslu, a luxury megastore that is now part of Shopping JK Iguatemi.

Built on 20,000 square meters and costing R$100 million, the neoclassical building once had around 700 employees.

Meanwhile, Eliana Tranchesi was arrested for tax evasion and selling products illegally brought into the country. It was the beginning of the company’s downfall. Seeing that its cash flow was empty in the following years, the company became a shadow of the way it was when it first opened in 2010.

There was a shortage of products, and at the time, Estadão reported, the saleswomen no longer had much to do as the customer had withdrawn.

In 2010, the company entered forensic recovery with a debt of R$80 million. In 2011, shortly before Eliana Tranchesi’s death and the closure of the megastore in Marginal Pinheiros, Daslu was purchased for R$65 million by the Laep fund owned by Marcos Elias, a businessman facing many questions in court. and also owns Parmalat in the country.

evacuation

In its business model after the megastore, Daslu sought to reinvent itself as a multi-brand network with units in shopping malls, São Paulo, Brasília and Ribeirão Preto (SP).

But the project also failed. In 2016, the company was kicked out of Shopping JK for not paying the rent (the bill was BRL 3 million at the time) – similar issues occurred at other malls.

There were also comments that there were difficulties in paying salaries and that despite the capital injections it received, the debt was more than demanded for collection. The result was bankruptcy.

Now, years later, not only the name of the main brand but also the name of nearly 50 sub-brands of certain lines of the company remained from Daslu.

On the website of auction house Sodré Santoro, usage rights to the Daslu brand are advertised for a minimum bid of R$1.4 million, which is well below the figures the store once handled.

In case those who are not interested, the auctioneer has planned two extra events for May 19 and 26. The information is taken from the newspaper. State of Sao Paulo.