The first useful piece of market research arrived without a spreadsheet. Márcio Gurgel was selling tools around Franca, in the interior of São Paulo, when mechanics told him that some of what he carried was not good enough. They named the brands they trusted and described the specialized tools they could not easily find. Gurgel listened, made trips to São Paulo for better stock, and returned workshop by workshop. Loja do Mecânico dates that beginning to 1988.
The anecdote contains the business in miniature. A working professional does not need a generic shelf labeled “hardware.” A mechanic needs the correct impact wrench; a body shop needs a paint gun that matches its compressor; a builder needs a machine that can survive the next site. The wrong product wastes money. The absent product delays paid work. Loja do Mecânico built a specialist assortment around that practical gap, then used each new retail channel to make the shelf easier to reach.
E-commerce before the category looked obvious
The company, then known as Gurgel Ferramentas, put a catalog and sales information online in 1998. Around 2000, customers could order, but a forum or email still connected the browser to a person. Automated checkout followed in 2003. The sequence now looks ordinary; at the time it was a bet that Brazilian buyers would purchase technical, sometimes expensive and often bulky equipment without walking an aisle first.
That bet worked because the internet solved the same old distribution problem at national scale. A local shop cannot stock every scanner, lift, lathe accessory, compressor and replacement part. A specialist website can present a much deeper assortment, explain specifications and deliver beyond the radius of a storefront. By 2012, the company said it had passed one million delivered orders. In 2013 it began importing and launched FortG, its own brand. It reported more than five million cumulative deliveries by 2015.
“My father wanted the mechanic to find everything in one place. It is the same spirit we maintain today.”Thiago Gurgel, chief technology officer and son of the founder, speaking to Exame in 2025
“Everything” has stretched well beyond the mechanic. The catalog covers hand, power and pneumatic tools; welding and painting; automotive diagnosis and auto-center equipment; woodworking, construction, gardening and agriculture; industrial machines, lifting gear and personal protective equipment. A corporate channel serves business buyers. The app adds mobile ordering and tracking. The marketplace extends selection, while FortG and exclusive products give the retailer more control over price, availability and differentiation.
A purchase that can change tomorrow's output
The core customer is not browsing for decoration. Mechanics, carpenters, builders, body shops, maintenance technicians and small workshop owners buy equipment that can determine which jobs they accept and how quickly they finish them. Industrial and corporate teams buy for operations. Home improvers and hobbyists also shop there, but professionals create a particularly valuable relationship: their product knowledge is high, their downtime is costly and their demand returns as work consumes discs, blades, lubricants, abrasives and parts.
This is why the company sits in an interesting place between consumer retail and B2B distribution. It needs the ease and price transparency of an e-commerce store, the technical confidence of a specialist distributor and the logistics to move both a screwdriver and a hydraulic lift. Recognized brands help reduce risk. Category-specific navigation helps a buyer reach the right specification. Dedicated corporate service handles larger or repeated orders. Delivery systems and pickup options solve the final physical problem.
One job, four connected layers
Financial services follow the same logic. Extended warranty protects a productive asset after the manufacturer's cover ends. A consórcio lets participants plan purchases of R$10,000, R$20,000 or R$30,000 in equipment through pooled payments and periodic awards. Insurance can protect the purchase or, as the company has explored with partners, the professional. These products are not incidental if a machine is also a customer's route to income.
Why an online pioneer needs an address
Loja do Mecânico opened its first physical store in Franca in 2006, the year it adopted its current name. The larger expansion began after private-equity firm EB Capital acquired control in 2020. The thesis was not that the website had failed. It was that digital sales reached only part of a fragmented market still served by neighborhood tool shops, regional distributors and specialist rivals such as DD Máquinas, Dutra Máquinas and Ferragens Negrão.
A store does work the website cannot. It puts a large machine at human scale. It lets a customer ask a technical question across a counter. It sells a single cutting disc needed now, rather than a pack that makes shipping economical. More subtly, the store can operate as a pickup point and a mini distribution hub. The customer sees one system; inventory can move through whichever channel gets the tool to the job.
The company can also use e-commerce evidence to guide real estate. Postal codes reveal where orders already cluster. Stores can be placed close to proven demand and distribution infrastructure rather than an imagined customer. In 2024, management paused openings to tune the assortment and economics of 18 locations. Each store would carry a core of at least 6,000 items, compared with a total assortment reported around 50,000. CEO Guilherme Favaro said same-store sales rose about 11% in the first half of that year and EBITDA increased 30%. He also said multichannel activity had reached 20% of revenue.
Expansion resumed visibly in March 2025 when the retailer opened in Interlagos, its first unit in the city of São Paulo and its reported 19th physical location. The broader plan has changed pace over time, so targets deserve to be read as ambitions. The durable idea is the hub: fewer items than the web, selected for local work, connected to the long tail online.
The fight for the space between purchases
A durable drill does not encourage weekly shopping. Loja do Mecânico's strategic problem is therefore frequency. Consumables provide one answer. Content provides another. In 2022 the company acquired O Mecânico, a specialist automotive-maintenance publication with a magazine, website, videos and a professional audience. The fit is direct: explain the work, teach a repair, demonstrate the tool and stay useful when the reader is not ready to buy.
The company has also developed loyalty and financial products, and in 2026 launched a Livelo arrangement through which eligible consumer purchases earn rewards points. In 2024 it acquired half of BSeller, the ERP company whose system supports store operations; Petlove held the other half. That investment is less visible to a shopper, but it addresses the plumbing required when inventory, orders and customers cross channels.
The differentiator is not merely having more tools. It is connecting technical selection, national range, nearby inventory and the services around a working asset.
The risk is familiar to any expanding specialist. Scale can blur expertise. A marketplace can widen selection but complicate consistency. Stores increase proximity but also fixed costs. Financial products can deepen loyalty but must remain useful and clearly explained. The company competes not only with other tool chains but with general marketplaces, construction retailers, manufacturer channels and the trusted shop down the street.
Its defense is the accumulated map of the category: what a mechanic means by “special,” which items turn quickly near a given postal code, when a buyer needs advice and when speed matters more than endless choice. EB Capital brought capital, governance and professional management to that map. Founder-family involvement remains through Thiago Gurgel, the chief technology officer. The combination is meant to preserve workshop fluency while making a large retail machine run with tighter controls.
The long aisle meets the short drive
Public revenue figures vary by year and report. NeoFeed put 2023 revenue near R$1.5 billion and said the company projected R$1.75 billion for 2024. Exame later reported a R$1.2 billion projection for 2025. The 2020 control deal was reported at a valuation around R$1 billion, but that is a transaction-era estimate, not a present valuation. The more useful scale marker may be customer reach: EB Capital's sustainability reporting said Loja do Mecânico served more than one million customers across Brazil.
That makes the company a sizable specialist in a market management has described as both enormous and scattered. Its place is not at the glamorous end of consumer internet. It is in the practical middle of the Brazilian economy, where an independent professional turns a machine into billable work and a small firm cannot afford to let equipment sit idle.
The original insight survives every new layer. Listen to the person holding the tool. Stock what the job actually requires. Remove distance between need and inventory. In 1988 that meant a seller arriving at the workshop door. In 2003 it meant a checkout button. Today it can mean a 50,000-item catalog connected to a 6,000-item local hub, with a pickup notification waiting before the next shift. The channel changes. The useful promise does not.
Keep exploring
Company channels, product demonstrations and further reporting on the expansion.