Top 100 Executives 2020 – João Paulo Ferreira, CEO, Natura & Co. Latin America

In 1970, when Natura & Co. founder Antônio Luiz Da Cunha Seabra opened the first Natura Cosmeticos store in Sao Paulo, he was but a humble store owner. Today he is the 25th richest person in Brazil, presiding over multinational that makes and sells a large range of eco-friendly products, in the image of the Yves Rocher company, for example. Natura & Co.’s trajectory over the last few years is due in no small part to the direction taken by its Latam CEO, João Paulo Ferreira.

52-year-old João Paulo Brotto Goncalves Ferreira, to give the Natura & Co. executive his full name, is a graduate of the University of Michigan and the University of Sao Paolo. He spent two decades at Unilever in Brazil before joining Natura & Co. in 2009 as head of logistics, charged with increasing the brand’s presence outside of its home country.

Ferreira quickly developed a reputation for being a shrewd operator with a particular flair for the technical aspects of running a company. Such was his success that he was chosen by shareholders to take over from Roberto Olivera de Lima in 2016, who considered him wise enough fill the role. But wisdom and daring-do are not mutually exclusive, and Ferreira’s moves saw Natura & Co. make a splash on the international stage with a number of astute big-name acquisitions.

Conquering the world
To break into the Asian market, Natura & Co. bought 100% of Aesop at the end of 2016, getting access to the Australian beauty product firm’s portfolio of cosmetics and network of branches. And the blockbuster deals did not stop there. Less than a year later Natura & Co. handed a billion euros over to L’Oréal to acquire iconic British ethical-cosmetics brand, the Body Shop, which gave Ferreira access to 3,000 physical stores in 60 countries across the globe.

"Ferreira quickly developed a reputation for being a shrewd operator with a particular flair for the technical aspects of running a company"

The shopping spree continued in 2019 with the purchase of the American arm of UK cosmetics royalty, Avon, for 2 billion dollars. Emptying the Natura piggy bank was a bold move but, with Natura & Co.’s turnover jumping 35% between 2017 and 2018, Ferreira’s strategy was vindicated.

Going green
It would be a mistake to pigeon-hole Ferreira as a spend first, ask questions later CEO in the style of Bob Iger however. And while it may be impossible to know for sure whether Ferreira’s ‘greening’ of the Natura group comes from a place of true concern for the planet or is a carefully crafted business development strategy, the signs point to the former holding weight, especially given the company’s efforts at tackling deforestation in the Amazon.

Native to the Amazon region, the Ucuuba fruit is used in a range of Natura products, from soap to body butter. To pick it, the group uses local communities as a way of avoiding deforestation.
"The Amazon is a global heritage. We are lucky to benefit from it as a large part of the forest is in Brazil," said Ferreira who insists that Natura "has shown that it is possible to combine economic progress with the protection of the environment. Our group’s activity has led to the preservation of 1.8 million hectares of Brazilian rainforest, which is half the size of the Netherlands.”