E-commerce: Meet the Amazon of the Amazon rainforest

Doing business in Brazil involves truly continent-sized challenges, implanting a model that is successful from the high-flying Southeast to rural villages in the Center-West, and everywhere in between. Indeed, when it comes to e-commerce, the word “Amazon” conjures up an entirely different meaning in the farthest-flung regions of northern Brazil, the most sparsely populated area in Latin America’s biggest economy.

Despite taking its name from the imperious river that snakes across northern Brazil from east to west, the U.S. tech giant has almost zero presence in the Amazon basin. Instead, the vanguard of e-commerce in Brazil’s North is led by Bemol, a 78-year-old retail chain shipping electronics, domestic appliances, and furniture to some of Brazil’s most remote villages.

With a fleet of trucks, ferries, and boats, Bemel reaches more than 50 municipalities in the western Amazon, spanning the states of Amazonas, Roraima, Rondônia, and Acre. As e-commerce boomed during the coronavirus pandemic, Bemol saw its online sales to remote riverside communities increase tenfold by the end of 2020.

Eighty percent of Bemol’s business comes from Amazonas, and until a few years ago it was almost completely concentrated in the state capital Manaus, home to half of the state’s population. In early 2019, 97 percent of sales in Amazonas were made in brick-and-mortar stores, as e-commerce was largely unheard of.

In late March, all of the chain’s stores were forced to close, as the Manaus health system collapsed under the strain of the coronavirus pandemic. Businesses were thrust into uncertainty and Bemol faced two main challenges: how to sell their products, and how customers could pay for them.

Outside the tech-savvy Southeast, major retailers in Brazil traditionally...