GIC Brasil has been working for more than two decades to create and develop humanized technology for retail. The company was founded by entrepreneur Irineu Fernandes, who dedicated five decades of his professional career to innovation consultancy for technology and retail companies in general, until he set up his own business, which is currently the leader in the segment of automation of operations in physical stores and e-commerce stages. GIC Brasil was born to transform lives. The year was 2001. Food retail was entering a new century with new challenges. This is how the innovation and technology company was born, with the inspiration of seeing people and businesses evolve through its technological solutions and participation in the world. From the outset, it focused on supermarkets and wholesalers. It ended 2022 operating stores in Brazil, Colombia, Panama and Angola. In recent years, the company has been sought out by other retail segments that need to organize, improve productivity and customer service. GIC Brasil works closely with clients to discover their needs and create automated management tools, revolutionizing the way retailers operate and the consumer shopping experience. The moment of purchase needs to be simple, effective and humanized. Technology comes in to achieve these goals. To develop the market solutions it offers, the company created the GIC Lab, an innovation, research and development laboratory. The lab creates and structures solutions using modern concepts of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), Machine Learning and Computer Vision. Sales success and profitability depend on the ability to integrate technologies. Despite being a technology and innovation company, GIC is essentially a people company. A company’s human capital is the most important asset for a technology company, as the founder often says. The results are a direct result of the technical knowledge, skills, behavior, competencies and empathy of our employees. Our values underpin the purpose of transforming the retail shopping experience Today, as Chairman of the Board of Directors, Fernandes is involved in the company’s strategic issues and its international expansion. He has also been invited to give talks on the evolution and future of retail in Brazil and Latin American countries. He is the author of the book Os Rumos do Varejo no Século XXI – Pandemia e Transformação (The Directions of Retail in the 21st Century – Pandemic and Transformation), which presents the recent history of retail on the continent and in the world, offers recommendations for management and looks to the future. “In addition to presenting the main aspects of the historical transition of commerce and how operations should pay attention to each stage of their processes, Irineu Fernandes outlines a scenario of evolution for the coming decades,” writes João Carlos de Oliveira, president of GS1 Brasil – Brazilian Automation Association and former president of the Brazilian Supermarket Association (ABRAS), in the book’s foreword. Much of what Fernandes has built up goes back to his professional and life experience from a young age. A visionary entrepreneur who decided to improve and change the way retail operates.
The entrepreneur was born on a farm in the city of São Roque, in the interior of São Paulo. From an early age, he worked in family farming and in the marketing of products. His dream of working at IBM led him to technology, in the main companies in the sector. As a boy, his first contact with retail was to help his mother, who was a confectioner. Fernandes rode on horseback with a two-sided bag slung over his chest to bring in the goods. At the sale, he would take the products from the list made by his mother and hand them over to the retail owner, who would write down the prices in a notebook. Payment was made monthly. Today, the entrepreneur remembers how trust is the foundation of retail and all relationships. He also recalls that modern concepts such as the shopper, self-checkout and others already existed in practice in the past, under the conditions of the time, which have been improved by the advance of technology.
