Instituto Embelleze, a well-known institution among Brazilians, is also found in the United States, where it arrived in February 2019 and opened a very successful franchise unit.

With such case, the brand became one of the finalists in the International Highlight Award, promoted by Franchising Brasil — a sector project for the internationalization of Brazilian franchise brands carried out by means of a partnership between the Brazilian Association of Franchising (ABF) and the Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency (Apex-Brasil).

The professional education institution was founded in 1998 and is present in 26 Brazilian states. Over 2 million beauty professionals have studied at Embelleze so far and became hairdressers, barbers, make-up specialists, hair removal specialists, manicure and pedicure specialists, eyebrow designers, and other professionals. Because of the American laws, operating in that country is challenging, so the company carried out a detailed study before opening its first unit there. “The American beauty market is ruled and regulated by strict laws, especially regarding the level of professional education offered to the new professionals, since the regulators believe the area is closely linked to people’s health”, says Marcella Scavassa, marketing manager of the company.

The place chosen for the first unit of Embelleze was Pompano Beach, in Florida, because of the large number of Latin inhabitants, especially Brazilians. According to Marcella, the entire process takes over 2 years, and the local government makes the new company go through a very detailed evaluation. “Starting the process to open a new business in the education field required a great amount of patience and resilience. We believe we have been doing a great job”, says the manager. “We have been learning and growing a lot as a company because of such challenges”, adds Marcella.

In addition to the bureaucracy to start operating, both the professionals qualified to teach and the students are subject to extensive evaluations before being authorized to work. It happens because in the USA beauty is seen as something crucial for health, so all the details are evaluated to check if professionals are duly qualified to provide services.

Despite the lockdown imposed by the local government by virtue of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Florida unit is almost ready to reopen, and expectations for the next months are high. Instituto Embelleze also has two units in Ecuador, and it intends to open more units in the United States and even expand to other countries. “Instituto Embelleze Beauty School has just completed one year of operations and it is certainly a great successful case for the brand and also for ABF”, completes Marcella.

About the International Highlight Award

The purpose of the award is to recognize chains that, by participating in initiatives developed by the program destined for promotion and qualification, have started or achieved a consistent internationalization process of their brands.

The award ceremony will be announced soon and three franchises will be the winners in the general category and one chain will be the winner in the Strategy and Consolidation category, which was created because of the high quality of the cases submitted to Apex-Brasil and ABF for appreciation. The criteria to be evaluated by the judging panel composed of members of the Franchising Brasil Management Board are: complexity of sector and market; operationalization process; impact of case; innovation of the initiative; and relationship with the participation in the Program.

About Franchising Brasil

Franchising Brasil is a sector project carried out by means of a partnership between the Brazilian Association of Franchising (ABF) and the Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency (Apex-Brasil) for the internationalization of Brazilian franchise brands and promotion of their businesses abroad. The initiative was developed to promote this business model that is well recognized in the main international markets.

READ MORE: Meet the shortlisted brands nominated for the International Highlight Award