For big corporations, Brazil’s famed Carnival is an annual magnet for millions of dollars in sponsorships, just as the Super Bowl is in the United States. And it, too, has been criticized as an orgy of crude commercialism.
But for thousands of smaller businesses, the pre-Lenten party, which begins this weekend, is a make-or-break proposition. From travel agents to confetti manufacturers and costume retailers, companies large and small have spent the last few months ringing up sales at a frenetic pace, while just about everyone else in Brazil was enjoying summer vacation.
“Carnival is a lot more than just fun. It’s big business,” said an exhausted Elias Ayoub, who owns a store chain in Sao Paulo called Palacio das Plumas, or the Palace of Feathers, which stocks more than 15,000 items associated with Carnival.
“But for me, Carnival is already over,” he said. “I just supply the whole circus, and let everyone else do all the partying.”
Since mid-October, Ayoub’s stores have been running on all cylinders, selling everything from beads and exotic feathers to glitter and cloth to Carnival connoisseurs countrywide. Though Ayoub will not divulge sales figures, he says he gets about half of his annual revenue in the four months leading up to the festival.
Many of Ayoub’s biggest customers come from Rio de Janeiro. The parade there, with its scantily clad dancers and thunderous drumbeats, is the global face of Carnival, even though it is celebrated throughout Brazil.
Rio is expecting more than 770,000 visitors from around the world for this year’s party, bringing in an estimated $557 million in tourism revenue, according to Riotur, the municipal tourism agency.
The flood of visitors is good news for retailers like Jorge Francisco, who opened a Carnival paraphernalia store called Babado da Folia in downtown Rio 15 years ago. The months before Carnival account for about 80 percent of his annual sales.
