Brazilian billionaire businessperson, Magazine Luiza
Magazine Luiza bets on the future: AI, experience, and the new Brazilian retail landscape
Luiza Helena Trajano shares her vision on the future of business, the impact of artificial intelligence, and the transformation of retail. In an inspiring talk, she explains why technology doesn't replace people and how physical stores will need to reinvent themselves to survive.
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About Luiza Trajano
Luiza Helena Trajano, president of the board of directors of Magazine Luiza, has appeared in several interviews and podcasts in recent months, discussing leadership, gender equity, retail innovation, and artificial intelligence. In a July 2026 episode of the Na Caixa podcast, she said she has "often had to give up profit for purpose" but added that "profit is indispensable." On the Equity Channel, she described quotas as "a transitional process to correct an inequality" and stated, "If you don't do it for purpose, do it because it gives profit." She also spoke about the role of women in business, saying she wants "50% of women in high-level positions" and that women should "sit together with men" to make decisions. Trajano has also addressed the future of physical retail and technology. At a LIDE event, she said "the physical store will not disappear" but must "sell experience, encounter." She described artificial intelligence as "a tsunami" and noted that Magazine Luiza has integrated AI into customer service, including a WhatsApp feature. In a conversation on the PodeMãe podcast, she discussed the company's new physical concept, the Galeria Magalu, which combines retail, a theater, and a YouTube studio. She also encouraged entrepreneurs in Franca, saying "the entrepreneur is the one who seeks solutions."
Transcript (19 segments)
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Luiza Trajano0:03
Because you know I'm from Franca. Jandário invited me to a super fancy restaurant here to give a lecture at an even fancier event. I kept thinking: 'Oh my God, what am I going to wear? Blue outfit, red outfit, white outfit.' So, super cool. And to have this whole group here now. So, what is entrepreneurship to me, folks? It's finding solutions. We have two sides of our brain, right? Problems and solutions. There are people who are only alive because they couldn't die—they look at a plant and the plant dies because they only see problems all the time.
Now, unlike you, Josias, I was raised in an entrepreneurial family. I had that blessing. A simple family—I've lived a better life too—and I was raised as an entrepreneurial woman, among entrepreneurial women. So I'm very privileged in that regard. In the interior of São Paulo, a simple family. When I was 12, I decided to give gifts. I'm an only child, an only niece. My mother turned to me and said: 'Go work, earn money, and give gifts.' So the word 'entrepreneurship' I heard very little of. I was raised with solutions. When I'd come home from school, an only child complaining—I went to better schools—I'd complain about a teacher. My mother would say: 'What can you do to make her like you?' So, the solution, except for illness, is within us, right?
My aunt worked in retail for a long time and had no children. Magazine Luiza exists because of her. I'm Luiza because of her, but the magazine is because of her. Being Luiza, I've had so much advantage that I always sit next to Luiz Furlan at political and business events, and we're always together, right, Furlan? So we ended up being great friends, calling each other Luiza and Luiza. So I'm called Luiza because of her. And very early on I went to study and worked on weekends. And when you learn to be a salesperson, you learn something very important, which is empathy, right? What is empathy? Empathy is putting yourself in someone else's shoes, seeing the world from their perspective. It's a very serious exercise, folks, because when we start a dialogue, with whoever it is, we want to show our point of view, and we have a very hard time understanding the very big world of the other person.
Magazine Luiza kept growing and growing. I ask a lot—growth is one of today's themes. You may not grow, but you have no choice but to change. You may not even want to be very big. Let's remember Kodak. What was Kodak? It was synonymous with cameras. Those of us who've been around longer know that. And how many synonymous names have we already had? So, however small you are, however big you are, you cannot avoid change. And today, folks, the worst thing is that with change, we don't know what's going to happen. It's much harder to know today. So the entrepreneur's role of taking risks is very difficult, Sérgio. I agree that the entrepreneur is very different from the manager, but we can be both, you know? You can be both. Of course, you have to develop—I had to develop my managerial role much more—but I come from an entrepreneurial family. But we also look for managers to help us too. So it's very important to understand this.
And let's talk a bit about Brazil. Brazil, folks, is a startup country. We are made for this moment. What's missing, as João Dória said in politics, is a 20-year plan for this country where we give continuity to one another, because we are a country where everything is born. Imagine Magazine Luiza. Franca is a city that is 70% people from Minas Gerais and 30% children of people from Minas. It's five hours from here. We say 'porta' and 'portão'—that's how we speak. And one of the things that helped me a lot, and I give an opinion to the young people— I love EEC, Fatec, we have a great relationship. How wonderful to have so many young people here today. You don't need to change. You don't have to be ashamed of your origins, you don't have to be ashamed of who you are. And one of the things that helped me—I never took diction classes, never did anything like that without thinking. And I also never tried to be the most important person. I always tried to give my best at every moment. I'm very proud to say I'm from Franca. I help the city a lot, I'm very involved there. And I'm not ashamed to say 'porta' and 'portão.' That's my essence. You have to keep that essence. We keep growing.
Today we have a super app. We have a super app. And what can I tell you? Three eras. This Super Magalu today has several companies. Cabum—wow, it's hunger time—it has a transport company that provides services. Leave that on the air. It has a transport company that provides services. It has the first fully Brazilian cloud available. Let me be a little salesperson here—when you sell, you buy in real, it has Brazilian sovereignty and you place it. So, a company born in the interior that competes with big companies.
And then I ask—and I wanted to talk to you about this—will physical stores disappear? That's what I hear the most. Do you want to know this or not? You want to? I knew it was the question people most want to know. Physical stores will not disappear. On the contrary, they will continue, but not the way they used to be. Today, physical stores need to sell experiences, encounters. And I'm going to show you—I brought one to show you.
We did a lot of research. In 1991, Magazine Luiza decided to create an electronic store. 'Luiza Magazine brings to your city'—putting it in a small city—the store of the year 2000, there wasn't even Facebook yet. We couldn't call it a digital store. When you do something new, everyone bets it won't work. Then you have to stay quiet and keep doing it and doing it until it works. Imagine—we put it in a city in Minas where people like to look and touch, and it only worked through TV and video. There was no multimedia in Brazil yet.
Then we have today 250 stores where the only product they have is a phone like this. Today we have—they said physical stores are going to disappear—where did they see that? The stock market goes up and down depending on the thermometer of those people over there. So, the result is we remain firm in physical stores, but we knew that the physical store within this ecosystem is part of multichannel. Just now someone asked me, 'Luiza, and the physical store?' First, folks, digital is a culture. We live in the digital era. What changed the most was mobile. Mobile changed everything. When they put the cell phone in our hands, it was a violent transformation.
And now I want to tell you that artificial intelligence—I'm going to help my friend there who sells courses—I think I'm going to sell a more popular language to you. So here's the thing: it's a tsunami, folks. I didn't know there were so many students, otherwise I would have brought a Stanford prodigy, a young person from Stanford who was there yesterday. So what can I tell you? A tsunami. On the other hand, I can tell everyone here—Who here uses WhatsApp? Raise your hand. Look at me. Using artificial intelligence is easier than using WhatsApp. True or not, professor? True or not? But you need to know it, need to understand it, and need to be alongside it.
It was advice from a young person from Stanford who said: 'I can no longer guarantee your job after artificial intelligence.' So let me tell you a quick story before showing the videos. When I was in Franca many years ago, I started a bus, an education initiative, to go to neighborhoods to teach technology. I'm mobilizing people to make a transformation. There was no way. I went into artificial intelligence, there's a bus—in three minutes it brought me everything I could do. But that doesn't get much publicity. But let me tell you another little story. I have a pool at my house in Franca. I decided to go in on Sunday without washing my hair—I didn't want to get my hair wet since I'd already done a blowout. I asked what exercises I could do without getting my head wet in the pool. In three minutes, it brought me four exercises, with drawings and everything. That's the artificial intelligence revolution.
So, my opinion—for anyone in this room—get in, keep asking, keep discovering. For the young people, they have to be your allies. Am I selling your company well or not? They have to be your allies. They have to be your allies. There's no other way. Now I'm going to show you—it was like this. I'm very fast once I start doing things. Construction—but we took a year. Whenever I'm on Paulista Avenue, I need to be on Paulista. Magazine Luiza today has 1,290 physical stores. And if you buy in Belém, you buy from here, two hours later you receive it at the store.
Artificial intelligence existed independently and was only for technicians. From 2022 onward, right, professor? In 2022 it became available to the public, but until then it was only for the technology people inside. So for many years, if you bought in a store, in two hours you could pick up your product thanks to the artificial intelligence that was behind it.
And then we bought this place, and I'm looking at it—you don't need to kill the past to put in a store. You have to create experiences that sell. And we were lucky to get the place where Livraria Cultura was, which the people of São Paulo love—people were crying. So we knew we couldn't destroy that culture. So what is this Livraria Cultura? It's the reinvention of the department store. You enter through Alameda Santos, through the Pinacoteca. For the first time, we brought the Pinacoteca to the people of Paulista. On the other side, you enter totally digitally. You have a plaza where every three months the experiences change. So we managed to show the ecosystem—we brought Neto's bookstore there, it was a bookstore, the virtual bookshelf was ours, the cosmetics era, and Cabum and all the group's companies there.
But here's what I learned from this—that's why Chanel is there and other companies—because when you have the physical, it's much more important to show the digital, Luiz, understand? You show the digital. So we made a manifesto and we brought the past, the future, and there are lots of sofas for people to hang out. You know why? People want to meet each other. Look at these 1,800 people here. São Paulo doesn't have a place to hold events because people want to meet each other. Digital is a reality, there's no way around it. It's a culture. You can't stay out of it. Artificial intelligence—you can't stay out of it. But people want to meet each other.
If you go there, João Dória, it's people at lunchtime, people who bring their families, because there's a place to meet, there's coffee, there's the bookstore, there's the experience, there's the Casa da Lu. So I'm going to show you our manifesto for the Livraria to say that the physical store will continue, but totally different from the old kind of physical store. Everyone here said it—you said it, 'I'm not selling coffee, I'm selling something else.' Everyone said it here—it's about selling experiences, selling encounters and everything else.
So let's take a look at it. And then to wrap up, because João Dória is super tight on schedule. João, let me tell you—I exercise, and normally I can arrive half an hour late because I know things start later. I told my teacher today I can't be late because João Dória is going to start on time. So I'm going to show you two videos. The second one is about Lu. Today we have the biggest digital influencer in the world. Now, hope for you—a Brazilian company that was born physical, 45 years old. She wins every award at Cannes, if possible. She's the first to sell, to be served entirely on WhatsApp. Don't go inside anymore—it's the first in the world. If you say, 'Lu, I want these shoes here,' while she doesn't deliver, she stays on WhatsApp. It's the first in the world to do this.
Now look here—a company that was born physical, totally Brazilian, totally Brazilian, competes, folks. Just now someone asked me, 'How are the Chinese people doing?' I said, 'You have to make peace with them because there's no point in fighting, right?' So we have to form alliances, like many people here have done. So I'm going to show two videos to finish. The first is the manifesto about this—to say that the virtual store invites you all. I bought an office for myself there, because now with artificial intelligence, what's going to be left of us—we're at the tip, right? Spending shoe leather and being at the tip. I'm serving customers again, taking photos.
On Fridays and Saturdays, when I'm here, you can find me. I love it because I did this for 20 years. I love being with the customers. I love being with the public to teach content. Let's watch the two videos, then. Thank you very much, folks. I love you. I love you. Thank you.