Freddy Carrillo is the President and CEO of Sherwin-Williams Brazil, and the Professional of the Month of this edition representing the South American country.
by Duván Chaverra Agudelo
The main power of our Latin American market is Brazil and there is a professional who throughout his career has struggled to get where he is, his name is Freddy Carrillo, a Peruvian by birth, Venezuelan of upbringing and now Brazilian by dedication, who is currently the President and General Manager of Sherwin-Williams Brazil.
Freddy has had an extensive professional career and has passed through several countries before arriving in 2010 to the paints and coatings industry, and later occupying the leadership position he has today in Sao Paulo, his current city of residence and from where he develops all his professional work since 2014.
"I was born in Lima and just one year old I moved to Caracas where I grew up and lived most of my life. I graduated from Albright College in 1994 and returned to Caracas to look for work. Later that year I started as a Marketing Trainee at Kraft Foods. After almost three years of work I decided to do an MBA. Between 1997-1999 I studied at Boston College and returned to Caracas to pursue my career at Kraft. In 2003 the company moved me to London to take on a Marketing Management for the European Union. In 2006 I moved to Miami to work in the Latin American Region. In 2008 I moved to Quito, Ecuador to assume the General Management of Kraft Ecuador. In 2010 I accepted a proposal to change industries and started at Sherwin-Williams to take over the newly acquired Condor Paintings. In 2011 we acquired the license, Fanapisa and integrated Sherwin-Williams Ecuador, "said the Professional of the month.
For Freddy, in the last seven years of his professional career he has had the opportunity to learn more about the industry and understand the growth opportunities to continue advancing alongside consumers.
Goals and achievements
With respect to his goals, Freddy Carrillo hopes to continue growing personally and professionally while developing high-performance talents and teams. "In the future I would like to continue working and learning from other international markets and taking on challenges of greater importance to the company," said the guest.
Regarding his main achievements, the professional says that his active participation in the Brazilian Association of Paint Manufacturers (Abrafati) has been something extremely important for him: "I personally learned a lot about the category and having worked in another industry during my last career, it allowed me to give a different perspective. Different companies have similar challenges and the important thing is to achieve long-term sustainable development and growth. We are giving continuity to the programs that have been working and at the same time bringing new ones, always trying to add value to the category."
The current market in Brazil
It is no secret to anyone that the current situation in the Brazilian market is not the best. The country is going through a political and economic crisis that undoubtedly has an impact on our paints and coatings sector. Freddy, as a market reference in an important company, knows about this present, but continues to see important possibilities for growth.
"The Paints market in Brazil is considered the 6th in the world in terms of size. In recent years it has suffered a contraction derived from the adverse economic situation that Brazil is going through. Normally the paint market accompanies the trend of GDP behavior and in the last two years Brazil is going through a recession. Despite this, there are many opportunities to grow within the current market through innovation and initiatives that promote the repainting of homes."
The added value becomes a differential factor in this era, as our guest explains: "It is a combination of having a deep knowledge of the consumer, understanding the needs in front of the category, so that based on that we can innovate with technologies and adding unique attributes that are relevant to them".
As for formulations, Brazil is a fairly regulated market, where our guest assures that there are few failures that occur. However, it believes that efforts should be made towards more constant and innovative developments.
"The ink market in Brazil is standardized and follows the requirements of the NBR 15079 standard. Therefore, I consider that in a general way, there is no longer a failure in the formulation and manufacture of paints in the country, but the fact that the industry could offer much more than it offers today, and only not offer because the consumer culture is still limited in the analysis of the price of the product and not in the quality". said the President and CEO of Sherwin-Williams Brazil.
Another important issue that our guest sees with good eyes is the efforts of the industry to provide more environmentally friendly solutions. "We see an important trend towards sustainable products, as more and more consumers are attentive to the environment and looking for products with these characteristics. Water-based products that significantly reduce VOCs are in demand and are increasing in other categories besides traditional Latex paint," freddy said.
A professional sports lover
Finally, it is worth highlighting another of the passions that our Professional of the Month has: sport, an activity that he carries in his blood and with which he even participated in world-renowned tournaments during his younger years.
"Tennis is one of my favorite sports and I play since I was little. I also practice other racket sports such as squash and ping-pong. During the weekends I practice golf. During my youth I played field hockey, and represented the Venezuelan National Team in different tournaments and games: Central American and Caribbean 1990, 1993 and Pan American Games 1991, among others. Football is the sport that I accompany the most on TV and live, but since I have lived in several cities, I have had to choose different teams to support."
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