Netshoes started as a single shoe store in São Paulo, and in 2007 it closed its shops to sell only online. Founders Marcio Kumruian and Hagop Chabab bet that Brazilians would buy sports gear on the internet. By 2017 the company had sold to more than 12.8 million customers in Brazil, Argentina and Mexico. When it filed to list in New York that year, it called itself the leading online sports and lifestyle retailer in Latin America.

Closing the Stores

Kumruian and Chabab opened their store in January 2000. Seven years later they shut their physical stores and launched Netshoes.com. The site sold brands such as Nike, Adidas and Mizuno, and the company ran its own distribution centers to ship orders across Brazil. In December 2014 it launched Zattini, a site for fashion and beauty. It also began building private label brands of its own.

Eighteen Dollars and an Exit

Netshoes priced its IPO at $18 a share in April 2017 and listed on the New York Stock Exchange as NETS. The shares fell in the months that followed as the losses continued. In 2019 Magazine Luiza, one of Brazil's biggest retailers, bought Netshoes after a bidding contest with the sporting goods chain Centauro. Netshoes left the NYSE in June 2019 and now runs as part of Magazine Luiza.

Cover: The Assault of the Shoe, Henri Charles Guérard. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a shoe (a shoe store gone online).