GABRIELA PINHEIRO
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Olist
·
2022
Shaping Olist's Expansion Strategy in Mexico
Product Strategy
Research
Roadmap Priorization
International Expansion
Problem
After the first two months of operating in Mexico, we had gained valuable insights into merchant behavior, market dynamics, and the platform's limitations. Those discoveries led to a new challenge: how could we turn that knowledge into an expansion strategy?
In Brazil, Upper Small and Mid merchants represented only 20% of the customer base, but accounted for approximately 80% of the company's revenue. Based on that, stakeholders expected us to prioritize the same customer profile during the expansion.
The challenge was that the Mexican platform still offered only a basic set of features, raising questions about which customer segments we should serve first and how the product should evolve to support its expansion.
My role
My role was to reduce uncertainty around this strategic decision. Within one week, I synthesized insights from previous research with dozens of Brazilian customers, interviews I conducted with 20 Mexican customers, business data, product usage metrics from Olist Brazil, and market research.
Based on these insights, I developed a prioritization framework that helped Product and Marketing define Olist's market entry strategy for Mexico.
Merchant Segments
The analysis showed that merchants in Brazil and Mexico shared very similar maturity patterns. Based on these findings, I grouped them into four segments, each with distinct needs and expectations from the product.
Micro: Early-stage businesses, often without a physical store, experimenting with different sales channels. They valued simplicity, operational centralization, and hands-on support to structure their business and grow sales.
Small: Businesses in the process of digital transformation, typically with experience in brick-and-mortar retail and looking to expand online. They needed tools to grow across multiple sales channels, along with stronger financial and operational control.
Upper Small: Established businesses with more complex operations, looking to scale their online presence without sacrificing efficiency. They required automation, streamlined workflows, and tools capable of supporting higher operational volume.
Mid: Mature, performance-driven businesses with structured operations and a strong focus on increasing market share. They expected a robust platform, advanced integrations, operational efficiency, and dedicated support.
Priorization Framework
I organized these needs into a framework that mapped business maturity against expected product maturity, making it clear which customer segments we could successfully support at each stage of the platform's evolution.
Simplified version of the prioritization framework
The framework revealed that targeting the highest-revenue segments at that stage would increase the risk of the expansion, as the platform was not yet capable of delivering the value those merchants expected. As a result, they would likely have a frustrating experience, undermining the product's value proposition from the very beginning.
This insight led to two key decisions:
Product: Prioritize foundational capabilities that were less complex to implement and aligned with the platform's current maturity. This allowed the team to learn from Mexican merchants (Micro and Small) before investing in the capabilities required to support more mature segments (Upper Small and Mid).
Marketing: Focus customer acquisition on segments that matched the product's current maturity, increasing the likelihood of a successful market entry.
Result
Product and Marketing aligned around a shared expansion strategy for Mexico. The roadmap followed an incremental approach, validating hypotheses with less complex customer segments before evolving the platform to support larger, more sophisticated operations.
2026 Gabriela Pinheiro
Curitiba, Brasil