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When the Thesis Meets Real Life: Why We Started Investing Outside Pure Tech
Why The Samba Capital now backs pet retail and atelier operators, using technology, process, and capital discipline to unlock offline markets.
Over the last few months, something interesting has been happening here at The Samba Capital: we started investing in businesses that are not, at their core, technology companies.
We still love software, digital products, SaaS and all that good stuff. But as we dug deeper into the Brazilian market, it became impossible to ignore some “traditional” sectors that move a lot of money, with real, recurring demand – often running with low efficiency and almost no well-implemented technology.
Our two most recent investments — a pet shop network and an atelier — are the perfect illustration of this.
The size of “offline money”: the pet market case
Brazil today is one of the global giants in the pet market. According to data from Instituto Pet Brasil and Abinpet, the Brazilian pet sector reached around R$ 68.7 billion in 2023. Source (PT-BR, official release):
Projections point to around R$ 77.3 billion in 2024.
A few highlights that caught our attention:
- Brazil is often ranked as the 3rd largest pet market in the world, with around 160 million pets (including ~60M dogs and ~30M cats).
- “Pet food” (industrialized feed) represents roughly 55.5% of the sector’s 2023 revenue.
- The specialized pet retail and online channels are growing fast and still have a lot of room for operational improvement.
When we look at a well-run pet shop network, we see:
- A huge and fragmented market, full of small players;
- Margins that can improve a lot with better operations + technology;
- An end customer with a strong emotional component (pet as “family”), which pushes both ticket size and recurrence.
That’s where our thesis comes in: just because the business didn’t start as “tech” doesn’t mean it can’t be massively leveraged by tech, process and smart capital.
Atelier, luxury and made-to-measure: the “silent money” of craftsmanship
Our second recent investment was in an atelier. At first glance, it sounds super niche. But when you pull the thread, you realize how big the fabric really is.
The Brazilian textile and apparel industry alone moves very serious money. On the top of that, the luxury segment has been growing fast:
- The Brazilian luxury market reached around R$ 98 billion in 2024.
- Between 2022 and 2024, the segment grew roughly 26% in total, about 12% per year on average, outpacing global luxury growth.
Inside this huge umbrella, the atelier plays in a very specific intersection:
- Fashion + luxury + personalization/exclusivity
- Loyal customers, higher ticket, demand for quality and experience
- Very low digitalization and professionalization in many cases — which means: a lot of room for improvement
Once you connect all these dots, you start to see an atelier as:
- A high value-added business
- With interesting margins
- And plenty of space for professionalization (process, operations, geographic expansion, standardized premium experience, etc.)
In other words: it looks like a small artisanal niche from the outside, but when you map it to the broader fashion and luxury chain in Brazil, you realize it’s plugged into a segment that already moves tens of billions of reais every year.
Why this makes sense inside The Samba Capital’s thesis
Practically speaking, there are three main reasons for us to be investing in these “non-tech” fronts (pet shop + atelier) alongside traditional tech deals.
1. Real diversification of risk
We’re used to the classic tech profile: high scale, high risk, high potential upside.
By adding more “real economy” businesses to the portfolio, we get different demand dynamics, different cycles and more stable cash flows. Not everything needs to be binary (either hockey-stick success or shutdown).
2. Huge markets, still under-optimized
Both in pet and in fashion/atelier, the data tells the same story:
- Large, growing, resilient markets
- High fragmentation
- A lot of operations still run on a mix of instinct, spreadsheets and manual processes
That’s exactly where the combination of data + technology + process + clinical capital tends to create very tangible value:
- Better margins
- Better operational efficiency
- Better expansion strategy
3. Technology as a multiplier, not a dogma
We still invest in pure tech companies — that’s in our DNA.
But here the angle is different: technology is a multiplier for businesses that already have validated demand, not a blind bet on future adoption.
- In the pet shop network: CRM, omnichannel retail, inventory and supply optimization, smart pricing.
- In the atelier: premium digital experience, scheduling and workflow, multi-unit operations, customer data, loyalty and community.
The “tech vs non-tech” debate doesn’t make much sense when you see technology as infrastructure and leverage more than as an identity label.
What this says about how we see the future
If you look strictly at the numbers, the conclusion is pretty straightforward:
-
Pet market: tens of billions of reais per year in Brazil, consistent growth, high recurrence, strong emotional attachment.
-
Fashion / luxury / made-to-measure: a chain that easily surpasses R$ 100 billion when you look only at the luxury segment in Brazil, with growth above the global average.
Ignoring these markets just because they didn’t “start in the cloud” would, in our view, be a strategic mistake.
At The Samba Capital, we still deeply believe in — and invest in — technology. But we’re equally comfortable backing companies that:
- Move a lot of money
- Operate in large, resilient markets
- Already have strong operational foundations
- And can grow significantly once they find the right mix of capital + people + structure
Put simply:
Our thesis isn’t “tech vs non-tech”. Our thesis is real value in big markets, backed by strong operators. Technology is a means — not the end.