Americanas Brand Guidelines: A 1929 Niterói Five-and-Ten, B2W & a 2026 Court Exit

Four Americans who changed course for Rio.

Americanas is a Brazilian retail chain with its headquarters in Rio de Janeiro. GZH, the Porto Alegre news site, reported in January 2023 that it was founded in 1929 by four American businessmen, John Lee, Glen Matson, James Marshall and Batson Borger. They were sailing to Buenos Aires to open a shop selling everyday goods at low prices, on a model that was already popular in the United States, when they met the Austrian Max Landesmann and the Brazilian Aquino Sales, who persuaded them to open in Rio de Janeiro instead. The name, Portuguese for “American stores,” comes from that group of founders, GZH says.

The first store opened in Niterói, in Rio de Janeiro state, in September 1929. Its first slogan promised that nothing in the shop cost more than two thousand réis, the currency of the day. By the end of its first year the chain had four stores, three in Rio de Janeiro state and one in São Paulo. GZH, citing the Rio Grande do Sul commercial registry, dates the first store in Porto Alegre to 15 October 1936, on Rua dos Andradas, then one of the city’s main shopping streets. In 1940 the company became a sociedade anônima, a joint-stock company, and opened its capital.

Ownership changed in 1982, when the main shareholders of the investment bank Banco Garantia became controlling shareholders, GZH reports. In 1994 Americanas formed a joint venture with Walmart, taking 40% of Walmart Brasil; Portuguese Wikipedia says the board approved the sale of that stake to Walmart in December 1997, and in August 1998 approved selling the subsidiary that held its 23 supermarkets to Comptoirs Modernes, then part of the Carrefour group. Portuguese Wikipedia says the company then went back to its main business, discount stores.

Americanas.com, B2W and a 2021 merger.

The chain went online in 1999 with Americanas.com, which had its national launch in 2000 after a trial period, GZH says. In 2005 the group bought Shoptime, a television shopping channel with its own site, and in 2006 Americanas.com merged with Submarino to form B2W, which ran the group’s online retail. In 2021 B2W and Lojas Americanas S.A. merged into a single company, Americanas S.A., and the reference shareholders who had held control since 1982 gave it up, GZH reported.

On the high street the chain added smaller formats. Portuguese Wikipedia, citing a 2003 company announcement, dates the first Americanas Express, a compact neighbourhood store, to May 2003 in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro. Online, the brand names were later folded together: on 2 July 2024, the trade title Mercado&Consumo reported, Americanas announced the end of the Submarino and Shoptime sites, whose customers and stock moved to Americanas.com.

In August 2026 Mercado&Consumo reported that Americanas had more than 1,400 stores and was reworking them under what it calls its “100 Years Strategy,” named for the company’s centenary in 2029. The company told the title it had been reopening units, modernising interiors and changing how products are displayed.

The chain’s clothing supply has also been examined by labour authorities. Repórter Brasil reported on 1 October 2013 that in January that year five workers had been found in conditions classed as analogous to slavery at a clandestine sewing workshop in Americana, São Paulo state, which made pieces for an intermediary supplying an Americanas own label. In September 2013 Americanas signed a conduct-adjustment agreement with the Labour Prosecutor’s Office, committing to monitor its supply chain and re-register its clothing suppliers, while denying direct responsibility; two earlier labour-court rulings had found the retailer not liable, the report says.

Design and documentation.

Brazilian retailers present themselves first through the shop. Many national chains grew by buying regional ones and then putting their own name over the door, so a single shop name, painted on façades in towns across the country, often carries decades of mergers behind it. Shop names are usually plain: a founder’s first name, a family name or, in the case of Casas Bahia, a tribute to the customers the business first served.

Characters do much of the talking. Several chains use a mascot or spokes-character in television advertising, on social media and in their apps. Magazine Luiza’s Lu began as a virtual sales assistant in 2003, according to Portuguese Wikipedia, and now appears in product videos; Casas Bahia’s Baianinho, a cartoon boy, was redrawn as a teenager in 2020 and restored to his classic look in 2026, trade press reported. Such characters can change with the company, and their redesigns are often discussed in public.

Screens now sit beside the shop. Apps and websites carry the same name and colours as the stores, and many retailers run marketplaces that sell goods from outside sellers under the retailer’s own banner. Television campaigns, seasonal sales events with their own names and printed or online catalogues complete the picture, as the companies publish them on their own channels.

Behind the shop fronts sit corporate pages. These usually give a founding story, name founders and owners, and, for listed companies, link to investor pages with filings on the B3, the São Paulo stock exchange. Restructurings, renamings and changes of control appear there as dated notices, which is often the clearest record of how a shop name has passed from one owner to the next.

A 2023 filing and a 2026 court decision.

On 11 January 2023 Americanas told the market it had found accounting inconsistencies. On 19 January 2023 it filed for recuperação judicial, Brazil’s court-supervised reorganisation, and a Rio de Janeiro court accepted the filing the same day, GZH reported; the company said its stores, site and app stayed open. Mercado&Consumo reported in August 2026 that the company later attributed the distortions to fraud by its former management, and that the episode led to investigations and a broad financial and operational restructuring.

Creditors approved the reorganisation plan at an assembly on 19 December 2023, with 97.19% of claims by value voting in favour, Bloomberg Línea reported. The court ratified the plan on 26 February 2024. Americanas asked for the process to be closed on 25 March 2026, and on 19 October 2026 the 4th Business Court of Rio de Janeiro declared it ended, finding that the plan’s obligations due within two years of ratification had been met; the decision remained open to appeal, Bloomberg Línea reported. The chain left the process smaller than it entered: it had 1,863 stores in September 2022 and 1,448 at the end of March 2026, according to the same report.

For a design guide, Americanas shows how one name can carry a store chain, a website and a run of absorbed brands, from a Niterói shop in 1929 to the single Americanas S.A. of 2021. Compare Magazine Luiza and Casas Bahia, two other Brazilian retailers with stores and large online operations. For this guide we use a bright red, white and a charcoal with a rounded sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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