Casas Bahia Brand Guidelines: A 1957 São Caetano Store, the Baianinho & a 2026 Recovery

A peddler’s round, then a shop named for its customers.

Casas Bahia grew from a door-to-door trade in the ABC region beside the city of São Paulo, as Exame places it. English and Portuguese Wikipedia both say that Samuel Klein, an immigrant from Poland, began selling as a peddler in São Caetano do Sul in 1952, and that many of his customers were migrants from Brazil’s north-east, especially from the state of Bahia. Estadão, in a history published on 17 August 2026, says Klein had arrived in Brazil five years before he opened his first shop there in 1957. Exame, in August 2025, described him starting out selling bed and bath linen from a cart, and naming the shop Casas Bahia in honour of those first Bahian customers.

The range widened to furniture, appliances and other durable goods. Branches followed in the capital and on the Baixada Santista coast, in the 1960s according to Exame and in the 1970s according to Estadão. The first store outside São Paulo state opened in Minas Gerais in 1993, Estadão reports, and two years later the chain entered Rio de Janeiro by buying the Garson chain and moved into Mato Grosso do Sul, Paraná and Santa Catarina. By the early 2000s it had reached Goiás and the Federal District, with about 300 stores. Portuguese Wikipedia notes that, despite its name, the chain opened its first shops in Bahia only in 2008, in Salvador.

The company also makes some of what it sells. Portuguese Wikipedia’s article on the group says the furniture maker Bartira was set up in 1962 in São Bernardo do Campo and bought by Casas Bahia in 1981; its factory is now in São Caetano do Sul. Central do Varejo, a retail trade site, reported in June 2026 that Bartira opened its first shop of its own on 3 July 2026, inside that factory complex.

Ponto Frio, Via Varejo, Via and a return to the shop name.

Control left the founding family in 2009. Exame and Estadão both report that the Klein family sold control to Grupo Pão de Açúcar (GPA), which had just bought the rival chain Ponto Frio. In 2010, Estadão says, the Casas Bahia stores, brand, distribution centres and the Bartira factory were folded into Globex, Ponto Frio’s parent, and in 2012 the combined company took the name Via Varejo. In 2019, both papers report, GPA sold its stake at an auction on the B3 stock exchange; Exame says a group of investors led by Michael Klein, the founder’s son, bought into the company at that sale, while Estadão says the shares were spread among market investors, leaving no single controlling shareholder.

The corporate name then changed twice. Estadão says the company became Via in 2021 and Grupo Casas Bahia in 2023, a move the company described as a return to the strength of its main shop name; at the same time it brought back a slogan first used in the 1970s, which promises total dedication to the customer. Portuguese Wikipedia says the group runs the Casas Bahia and Pontofrio shops and the Extra.com.br website and has been listed on the B3 since 2013; Exame notes that Ponto Frio is now known simply as Ponto.

The most visible face of the brand is the Baianinho, a cartoon boy in a cangaceiro hat, as English Wikipedia describes him. Marcas pelo Mundo, a Brazilian marketing site, dated the character to 1960 when reporting in October 2020 that it was being redrawn as CB, a teenager, in a campaign by the agency Y&R with a new look by the studio Miagui; English Wikipedia dates the Baianinho to 1979 and records a strong negative reaction online to the change. In May 2026 the company brought the classic Baianinho back alongside a new ambassador, the singer João Gomes, Central do Varejo reported, and in July it ran a sales event named after him. The chain also has a place in Brazilian pop music: Portuguese Wikipedia notes that the band Mamonas Assassinas named it in their 1995 song “Chopis Centis.”

How Brazilian retailers present themselves.

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.

Two restructurings in two years.

The group has gone through two court-supervised restructurings. Exame reported on 19 June 2024 that a São Paulo court had ratified the extrajudicial recovery plan the company filed at the end of April 2024, a debt renegotiation already agreed with its main creditor banks, Bradesco and Banco do Brasil. In 2025, Estadão says, the asset manager Mapa Capital took control of the company, with about 85.5 per cent of its shares, after converting debentures into equity.

The second restructuring followed in 2026. Veja, citing the business paper Valor Econômico, reported on 14 August 2026 that Casas Bahia had closed 298 stores on 13 and 14 August, about 28.7 per cent of a network of just over 1,000; the magazine gave the year-end count as 1,042 units in 2025, against 1,078 in 2023. On 16 August 2026 the group and nine subsidiaries filed for judicial recovery (recuperação judicial) in São Paulo, Estadão reported. G1 reported on 21 October 2026 that the São Paulo court had authorised the recovery process to begin, with 30 days for the group to supply outstanding documents, and that the recovery plan still had to go to creditors. As of 11 November 2026 the shops were still trading: InfoMoney reported that day that the company, in judicial recovery, had told the securities regulator CVM that its management had made no decision to close more stores, and had moved its third-quarter results to 10 December.

For a design guide, Casas Bahia shows a chain whose name honours its first customers, whose mascot has been redrawn and then restored, and whose shop name outlasted several corporate names. Compare it with Magazine Luiza, its rival in furniture and appliances, and with Americanas, another Brazilian national retailer. For this guide we use a storefront blue, a deep blue, brick red and sun yellow with a bold sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Casas Bahia’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.