Saulo Spaolanse steps outside Brazilian comfort zone to lead Schneider Electric in Romania

For Brazilian Saulo Spaolanse, coming to Romania to leadSchneider Electric'slocal subsidiary was a challenge, another step outside his comfort zone. It may not seem this way, at a first glance. He came from Brazil, a market ten times bigger than Romania's. Moreover, Sao Paolo has 21 million inhabitants, almost the entire Romanian population. This makes Romanian capital Bucharest alone seem like a walk in the park. By Corina Saceanu Saulo used to run the residential products division for Schneider in Brazil, while here in Romania, he runs the entire subsidiary and his task is to increase the market share in a region which is not booming anymore. “From 2004 to 2008, Eastern Europe was booming, and South America was so and so. Now it is different. Eastern Europe started to suffer in 2009, while South America is booming. In terms of management challenges, I have different challenges than I had in Brasil. But the main challenge is the same – increase the market share, invest in local competences, develop the team,” Saulo Spaolanse says in a interview to Romania-Insider.com. Already proficient in Romanian, after only five months of staying in Romania, Saulo had expected a more difficult adaptation to the new country. But him and his family adapted fast. His children, the 5-year old Camilla and the 4-year old Philip are already going to school here, while his wife has also adapted well to the city. Saulo's biggest challenge in terms of business was to understand the new market, the Romanian consumer and the business environment here.

“People complain to me about the traffic, but for me this is no problem, compared to Sao Paolo. The biggest challenge was to understand the business environment, the Romanian customers, the executives, who are different,” he says.