Have you ever stopped to think about the story behind Grupo Mateus? Recently, I’ve been reflecting on how Ilson Mateus managed to build a retail empire starting almost from scratch — and his current fortune is a very interesting reflection of that.

Ilson Mateus Rodrigues was born in the 1960s in Imperatriz, Maranhão, in a context where economic opportunities were practically nonexistent. In the 1980s, like many Brazilians, he tried his luck in Serra Pelada during the gold rush boom. But unlike many, he realized that gold wasn’t his path. He returned to Maranhão and made a choice that would change everything: he opened a small grocery store in Balsas.

What caught my attention is that from the very beginning, he already had something different. It wasn’t just selling products — he identified local demands, built relationships with customers, then started doing logistics between cities. This vertical integration vision appeared very early in his career.

From the grocery store, Armazém Mateus was born, and here’s an important detail: during the Cruzado Plan, when most people were afraid, Ilson made a bold bet by buying goods on credit. Risky? Yes. But that’s exactly what accelerated exponential growth. In the 1990s and 2000s, the group evolved into Mateus Supermarkets, then Hiper Mateus, and began diversifying — Eletro Mateus, Bumba Meu Pão as its own production, and later the wholesale model with Mix Mateus.

The turning point was the IPO in 2020. During the pandemic, Grupo Mateus raised approximately R$ 4.63 billion — it was Brazil’s largest IPO that year. With revenue of R$ 9.9 billion in 2019, the company proved that food retail in the North and Northeast regions was an underestimated market. After that, expansion accelerated even more: new stores, partnerships like MateusCard with Bradesco, and strengthening logistics.

Ilson Mateus’s fortune was estimated at around US$ 1.7 billion according to Forbes in 2022 — a direct result of the appreciation of GMAT3 shares and consistent operational growth. That’s not just a number; it’s proof that a well-executed regional strategy works.

What makes this story relevant for investors is that it breaks a paradigm: you don’t need to be in São Paulo or Rio to build something huge. Grupo Mateus dominated a space that larger competitors ignored. It maintained financial discipline while growing, integrated vertically to improve margins, and created a hybrid model that serves everything from traditional retail to wholesale.

Of course, there are risks — geographic concentration, squeezed margins in retail, sensitivity to consumption by middle and lower classes. But considering Ilson Mateus’s trajectory from that grocery store to a billion-dollar IPO, it’s hard not to recognize that he understood something fundamental about the Brazilian market that others missed.