Justo Fuentes and the art of getting customers to come back

A ribbon makes a cooperative opponent. Hold it steady, produce the scissors, and the ceremony usually ends well. At Payless’s Megacentro reopening in Santo Domingo Este in October 2025, Justo Fuentes stood at the right of the group, attending to the orange ribbon. The harder part would come after the photographs: persuading people that a shop they already knew deserved another look.

Fuentes, Payless’s global chief executive, had arrived at that problem by a long route through the footwear business. He had led Bata in Latin America before taking responsibility for Payless’s regional operation. Across the change of company, a set of concerns followed him: how shoes reach the shelf, how customers find them, and how to keep fashion within an ordinary budget.

His career offers a particularly useful view of retail because it crosses so many of its unglamorous borders. Manufacturing belongs in the story. So do warehouses, websites and the person who helps a shopper make up their mind. A shoe gets a surprisingly large supporting cast.

A retailer who learned both sides of the counter

Fuentes studied commercial engineering at Universidad de Chile. Later, in 2014, he attended IMD’s Breakthrough for Senior Executives program. By then, his working life had already taken him into senior positions at Bata, including the chairmanship recorded in Bata Chile’s 2010 financial statements and the president commissioner role listed in the Indonesian company’s 2012 annual report.

Those appointments put his career across national borders well before his current Florida base. His later role as president of Bata Latin America encompassed more than 1,000 retail stores, alongside electronic commerce, catalogue and wholesale distribution, and manufacturing. That combination matters. It places the attractive display and the complicated business of supplying it within the same field of responsibility.

In April 2019, discussing Bata’s Colombian business, he outlined investment in technology and expansion. The proposed spending reached US$5 million. New stores were part of the plan; warehouse automation and an improved online platform were part of it too. These were announced intentions, with the practical work still ahead.

There was a fashion dimension to the Bata assignment as well. At the company’s 2019 Fashion Weekend in Prague, the agenda included opportunities for design students to present their work. Fuentes discussed bringing Latin American universities into future editions and the possibility of limited collections from the resulting designs. His Colombian plans also included trend-led women’s shoes and comfort technology. The range of subjects is revealing: an executive discussing investment and store numbers also had to consider what would make the next collection interesting. Distribution could put a product within reach; the product still needed to invite a second glance.

In another interview that month, his explanation of the retail formula put well-run shops beside a modern digital channel and dependable logistics. The emphasis was on their connection. The customer might see a shoe; the executive had to see the chain of decisions that made buying it possible.

A familiar name, a different assignment

Payless brought a new set of circumstances. In January 2020, as the company announced its emergence from bankruptcy protection in the United States, Fuentes was named chief executive of its Latin American business. That division was then described as the company’s largest business unit.

The geography is essential to understanding his assignment. Payless’s retail operations outside North America, including its company-owned Latin American stores, were separate legal entities and had been outside the US bankruptcy filing. The familiar American story of closed shops could easily obscure the continuing business elsewhere.

Fuentes’s work was therefore rooted in an operating regional network. There were customers to serve, local teams to work with and shops whose future depended on decisions made in the present. The brand’s history traveled with it, but so did the practical advantage of already being part of people’s shopping routines.

The price tag begins at the factory

One revealing part of his early Payless agenda concerned where the shoes came from. In a December 2020 interview, he discussed adding Latin American factories to sourcing in Asia. The company had begun working with 17 factories in Colombia, with production in Bogotá and Bucaramanga among the locations he mentioned.

He made distinctions by product. Colombian supply offered advantages for leather, fashion and school shoes, including time saved; athletic footwear remained a category for which he favored Asian sourcing. The point was to fit the supply decision to the merchandise. A sourcing map could change according to what was inside the box.

His argument connected that work to the promise in the Payless name. Fashion had to arrive at a price people could manage, and quality remained part of the bargain. Affordability, in that account, depended on choices made long before a customer reached the till. The efficiency had to happen somewhere; asking the price label to do all the work would be optimistic accounting.

A phone, a website, a place to try them on

The customer-facing changes were equally specific. In December 2020, Payless introduced its Guatemalan online store with more than 900 footwear and accessory options. WhatsApp sales sat alongside the website. The launch described a service reaching all 22 of the country’s departments, supported by the existing store network.

By February 2021, Fuentes was discussing online availability across El Salvador, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Ecuador. The plans still included physical expansion and store modernization. Adding a screen to the business did not remove the importance of the shop floor.

He subsequently explained the appeal of connected shopping channels through a familiar customer habit: finding shoes online and visiting a store to try them. For footwear, that is a substantial consideration. A photograph can offer a persuasive introduction. The fitting supplies information a photograph has difficulty volunteering.

There is continuity here with his Bata years. Technology provides another way into the business, while the store gives that interest a physical place to go. Fuentes’s task has involved making the two useful to each other, with the product and the customer’s confidence at the center.

The ribbon and the ordinary Tuesday

At Megacentro, the modernization became visible in a 512-square-meter store. The October 2025 reopening presented rearranged furniture, new lighting, digital screens and dedicated areas for particular products. There were more registers and spaces designed to make the merchandise easier to explore.

Country general manager Paul Vigoroux described the project as the beginning of an updated corporate image to be introduced at other shops. Denise Bernard, responsible for Caribbean and Central American operations, also took part in explaining the business’s local development. The event put several layers of leadership in the same frame.

For Fuentes, a reopening gives a plan an address. It also leaves the ordinary test intact. On the next uncelebrated shopping day, the layout still has to make sense, the collection still has to interest someone, and the service has to justify their time. Ceremonies are scheduled. Repeat visits have to be earned.

A little more help with the decision

By July 2026, the renewal of Payless at City Mall in Alajuela, Costa Rica, provided another view of his direction. Fuentes described a move from self-service toward a model in which the salesperson becomes a consultant. In his words, “el vendedor actúa como un consultor” - the salesperson acts as a consultant.

The same comments tied the store changes to international brands, electronic commerce and social media. The new layout separated product categories and included accessories and shoe-care products. The company described a gradual extension of the model to other Costa Rican locations.

“el vendedor actúa como un consultor”

Justo Fuentes · City Mall Alajuela · July 2026

The human interaction is an especially interesting part of this chapter. A discount retailer is making room for more assistance inside its value proposition. The ambition depends on what employees actually do when someone asks a question, hesitates over a style or needs another size. The strategy reaches its most concrete form in a conversation beside the shelves.

The people who have to make it work

Fuentes’s public posts repeatedly bring colleagues into the picture. In 2024, after a working week in Miami, he praised the combination of younger executives and experienced specialists. He also referred to a three-stage strategic plan agreed with shareholders for 2023-2027, identifying its second stage as “Rebuild the Foundation of Payless.”

His LinkedIn profile gives a later project a more theatrical title: The Redemption of the Phoenix, starting in January 2026. Its stated purpose is restoring the brand’s relevance. Another project description connects modernization to younger generations and the continuing promise of value for money.

That is a substantial assignment for a familiar shoe shop. Fuentes has approached it with ideas developed across a long footwear career: source carefully, connect the buying channels, improve the stores and give teams a plan they can carry out. The next chapter takes place in the customer’s visit. The ribbon, having done its part, can retire.