Leading this operation is Marcio Chaer, Magazine Luiza’s General Director of Transport. He explains that planning begins practically the day after the campaign ends:

"As soon as Black Friday ends, we begin the first phase of planning. We assess structural bottlenecks, such as lack of storage capacity in a certain region, because these types of solutions can take months."

According to Chaer, preparation begins at least one year in advance and is based on lessons learned from the previous edition:

"If we’re talking about 2025, in January 2024 we already start the first phase. If we had a bottleneck due to insufficient floor capacity in a given region, we need to solve that immediately, because structural solutions take months."

Once the critical points are identified and addressed, the operational planning begins:

"In the second phase, we structure the entire operational plan: hiring personnel, fleet sizing, demand forecasting, strategy definition. This takes place between September and November. That’s when we define how many vehicles will be needed, how many people will be mobilized, and for how long."

When it comes to sizing the space needed for Black Friday, the director explains that the ability to redistribute inventory has become increasingly essential as the date approaches:

"This happens—and more and more often. Customer behavior is increasingly dynamic, so decisions must be almost in real time. Of course, redistributing inventory isn’t something you can do overnight, especially between different regions of the country. Sometimes the trip alone takes four or five days. So it requires analysis. But yes, we’re increasingly required to make decisions closer to these events because everything changes fast: consumer behavior, technology, and how the competition moves."

To keep up with volatility and guarantee fast deliveries, Magalu continues to invest in expanding its urban hubs:

"Today, about 70% of what we deliver in Brazil arrives within 48 hours. To achieve this, we strongly rely on urban hubs. They don’t need to be right in the city center, but must be very close to the consumer clusters, with the capacity to dispatch 50, 100, or 150 vehicles per day. Today we have 23 last-mile hubs."

In addition to last-mile operations, the executive explains that Magalu has 21 storage centers throughout Brazil, located outside CBDs and usually along highways and logistics corridors.

"Location is always guided by consumer clusters. For example, we have distribution centers in Ribeirão Preto and Londrina, which were Magalu’s first two. In the Northeast, Salvador, João Pessoa, Fortaleza. In Goiás, in Florianópolis/Itajaí, in Porto Alegre… always close to major consumption centers."

Regarding transportation capacity, Chaer cites numbers illustrating how much operations expand during this period:

"We increase our transportation structure by about 50% between late November and late December. That’s roughly 20 to 30 days. We add around 3,000 vehicles—between trucks and cars—to our network. On a regular day, we operate between 6,000 and 6,500 vehicles. On Black Friday, we reach something like 9,000 to 9,200. We practically grow by 50%."

Additionally, the modernization of centers is also part of the strategy. In 2024, the company’s main hub in Osasco received a new semi-automatic carousel system.

"This gave us additional capacity of about 9,000 orders per hour. With this automation, we can process 70,000 to 80,000 additional orders per day at this hub."