Have you ever stopped to think about the story behind the "Old Man of Havan"? Well, there's a lot more interesting about this businessman than what we see in viral videos.

Luciano Hang was born in 1962 in Brusque, Santa Catarina, and grew up in an environment where entrepreneurship was practically synonymous with survival. The detail that many people don't know is that he faced dyslexia in childhood, which made his early school years quite difficult. But instead of giving up, he kept studying and eventually took a Data Processing course at the Regional University of Blumenau. You can already see that from an early age he had this problem-solving mindset.

His entrepreneurial career started early indeed. At 17, he was already working at the Carlos Renaux Textile Factory, where his parents worked. A few years later, at 21, he bought Tecelagem Santa Cruz. It was basically a young guy learning the mechanics of commerce while building his own path.

Havan was founded in 1986, initially as a fabric store created together with a partner named Vanderlei de Lima. The name came from the combination of the two founders, but Hang later bought out his partner's share and took full control. What started small grew into a real department store, selling everything — electronics, clothing, toys, home decor.

The expansion was gradual but steady. In 1995, they opened their first branch in Curitiba, in 2003 they launched the e-commerce, and by 2017 they already had 100 stores spread across Brazil. That thing with stores inspired by the White House with replicas of the Statue of Liberty? It became a trademark, an visual identity that everyone recognizes.

Financially, the success was enormous. Forbes estimates put Luciano Hang's fortune at around 3.2 billion dollars, making him one of Brazil's wealthiest entrepreneurs. Most of it comes from Havan, but he's also involved in shopping malls, energy distribution companies, and media. Even with all this success, Havan has never gone public — there were moments when they considered it, like in 2021 when the valuation approached 45 billion reais, but it never materialized.

What really boosted his popularity was the internet. Starting in 2017, he began appearing more in the company's campaigns, and that's when the "Old Man of Havan" went viral. Interestingly, Hang himself acknowledged that although it started as a critique, it became an incredibly effective marketing strategy. As for Luciano Hang's age, in 2026 he will be 63 years old, but he remains an extremely relevant figure in Brazilian retail.

In recent years, he also gained prominence for his political activity, publicly supporting Jair Bolsonaro in the 2018 and 2022 elections. This generated a lot of controversy and further increased his visibility in public debate. Regardless of people's opinions about his political positions, the entrepreneur's story shows how someone can turn a regional business into a national retail powerhouse. Over 40 years of operation, thousands of employees, presence across Brazil — it's a entrepreneurial story worth following, even if controversial.