Grão de Gente develops an innovative approach and boosts digital transformation with the cloud
About Grão de Gente
Grão de Gente is a retail brand focusing on baby products, accessories, and crib mobiles with operations in Brazil and Latin America. With investment in technology and leadership in market trends, it now offers over 50,000 exclusive items.
Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.
Contact usThe company relied on the cloud to develop its website and e-commerce platform, gaining the autonomy it needed to manage IT resources, reduce costs, and increase conversion rates.
Google Cloud results
- 50% overall savings
- 32% higher sales conversion rate
- 26% increase in online sales
- Enhanced user experience
Increased sales and customer engagement
Grão de Gente is a brand selling decoration and layette for babies and children. With over 350 collaborators in three cities and two distribution centers in the state of Minas Gerais, this e-commerce platform is renowned across Brazil for its early childhood products. The company sells from crib mobiles to baby accessories, with a portfolio of over 50,000 items.
Products such as crib bedding sets, mattresses, nursing pillows, and baby nests are some of the most-searched by consumers on the site. Today, the company runs operations and owns five factories in Brazil and Paraguay, which are responsible for 80% of the products in the layette line.
The initial business model was online but later expanded to physical stores, with the first opening in 2023. The brand intends to continue relying on new technologies to further increase its market share.
As a digital native, innovation is embedded in Grão de Gente's DNA. "All technological resources are developed internally. Grão de Gente used to be an agency that later became an online retail company. We're currently expanding our portfolio, improving registration, customer recommendations, and business intelligence. There's a whole universe of possibilities to explore," explains Gustavo Ferro, CEO and Founder of Grão de Gente.
Technical challenges and seeking changes
In search of more scalability and flexibility to improve its e-commerce experience, Grão de Gente's team reached out to Google Cloud for support in January 2023. Some of the benefits that tipped the scales for the company were the service it received and easy access to documents for the tools it used.
"We kicked off the cloud project in January and were done by April. Google Cloud provided comprehensive support. We realized we could have enough databases and explore e-commerce architecture modeling, some of the areas we needed to upgrade."
—Gustavo Ferro, CEO and Founder, Grão de GenteAccording to the company's CEO, the main highlight is solution integration. In using the tools, Firestore serves as a database, optimized to store large collections of small documents. BigQuery, a low-priced serverless corporate data warehouse, handles everything related to business intelligence and data modeling.
Also, the machine learning algorithms of BigQuery and Vertex AI create customized store windows, streamlined inventory management, efficient logistics, and process optimization at factories, as well as more effective marketing strategies.
Cloud Run is another essential solution, presented as a managed computing platform that enables execution of request- or event-enabled containers. Meanwhile Cloud Functions, which helps create event-based applications, works as a connection layer in this structure.
Site transformation and business impact
Throughout the process of building the new site, e-commerce structuring, and later stages, Grão de Gente's teams gained more autonomy to manage cloud resources and, consequently, reduced costs by 50%.
Other figures also stand out, like a 26% increase in online sales in the first months of migration and a 32% growth in conversion rates, together with an increase in the total percentage of earned income.
"Besides more sales, we also expected more flexibility and user conversion, based on a robust platform that would provide us with more security and support. We have achieved these goals. Our collaboration with Google Cloud has resulted in an innovative approach that has driven our brand's digital transformation."
—Gustavo Ferro, CEO and Founder, Grão de GenteThe e-commerce platform has reshaped company operations and customer interaction. Each platform resource has been carefully designed to streamline user experience and boost these results.
With the Content Management System (CMS), the team can easily create different types of pages to share relevant information about products, industry trends, tips for parents, and more. This also helps improve site SEO, driving search engine visibility.
Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) efficiently and collaboratively manages vendors, products, and PO processes, while Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has given the company a comprehensive way to understand customer preferences and behavior better.
Demonstrated improvements open the door to generative AI investments
As of now, 80% of access to Grão de Gente's webpages is mobile, which shows how responsive the site is. Benefits are apparent and particularly visible during the product selection, checkout, and purchase stages.
"In terms of usability, I can enhance what our site needs by applying Google Cloud resources, and the process is a success. The documents and approach to products and applications have evolved and are now clearer, so everything can be accessed democratically."
—Gustavo Ferro, CEO and Founder, Grão de GenteThe lessons learned and ease-of-use of cloud tools have encouraged Grão de Gente to even consider exploring generative AI to enhance product catalogs.
"We've seen that it is possible to send pictures, have them read, and the mechanism already knows what is what. This proves useful to create names and descriptions, as well as product recommendations, for example. So, we're going to invest in generative AI in many areas, and we're certain this technology will change the rules of the game," concludes Gustavo Ferro.
Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.
Contact us
About Grão de Gente
Grão de Gente is a retail brand focusing on baby products, accessories, and crib mobiles with operations in Brazil and Latin America. With investment in technology and leadership in market trends, it now offers over 50,000 exclusive items.