Four success stories from Uruguayan exporters

The final module of the 2019 Export Skills Training Program featured four companies that have successfully embarked on the path of internationalization and were willing to share the challenges they overcame and the achievements they reached.

Discover in this chapter of Success Stories the experiences of the brands Agnès Lenoble, Ingenium, Saint Hnos., and Transparente Films.

Agnès Lenoble

I’m the daughter of artisans, and that led me early on to discover the beauty of handcrafted work. That’s how Agnès Lenoble was born—a brand dedicated to the artisanal design and production of jewelry and fashion accessories. I founded it in 2015, but I’ve been building it for over six years.

I always knew I wanted to have a more international than local focus. At first, I studied Uruguayan brands, observed which ones grew and established themselves, and noticed that Uruguay had a ceiling—but the world didn’t. While today my immediate income comes from the Uruguayan market, I’m very interested in international growth.

I know I have a product that’s easy to introduce abroad because it has a unique element rooted in the most traditional and artisanal aspects of our country—that’s its added value. That’s why, whenever someone I knew traveled, I would use the opportunity to send emails to stores in those countries to introduce my creations, but I rarely got any response.

At a Uruguay XXI export talk, I shared this experience with the speaker, and she advised me to stop insisting on that path—it wasn’t working. Big brands receive dozens of emails a day. Her recommendation was to focus on improving the product, the quality, the designs, and the company’s infrastructure.

So I stopped obsessing over exporting—but I kept learning. I went to every seminar, even on topics I thought I already understood. Slowly, with globalization and platforms like Instagram, I started receiving inquiries from people interested in my products who wanted to buy them. That’s when I decided to create a website and develop an e-commerce platform.

I took advantage of all the opportunities offered by the government and the business matchmaking events organized by Uruguay XXI with international entrepreneurs. I learned how to research markets—some don’t value or appreciate my product, but others do. So I focused on those.

On commercial visits, you get to see markets from the inside and meet people. When I was in São Paulo, I met a New York store that really liked my products. But once in the U.S., I noticed people in the store weren’t even stopping to look at them. They told me it was because the price was too low. I raised prices to more than double—and only then did people start to show interest. Every experience teaches you something. That moment taught me the importance of analyzing the product, its added value, and its pricing.

On a later visit to New York, I achieved larger sales—but this time by focusing on price rather than volume. We’re still growing through this process, now with the goal of choosing one country at a time to concentrate on.

Agnès Lenoble
Founder of her namesake brand

Ingenium

Many businesses are born from an identified opportunity or a problem to solve. In my case, it stemmed from a vocational passion for structural engineering.

The path was long. When I graduated, I had a degree but no market knowledge or idea how to build an independent career. I worked in a few local firms to gain experience, always with the clear goal of creating my own path.

An architect gave us a small space in her office, and that’s where Ingenium began—a consulting firm specializing in structural engineering.

The first thing we did was call people we knew to tell them about our new venture and offer our services. The first two projects came from referrals by colleagues.

From the start, internationalization was a necessity. For four years, we had the desire, but no foreign contacts. We’d occasionally search online, send a few emails or make some calls—none of which led anywhere. It felt like spam.

At the end of 2014, with construction activity declining in Uruguay, we decided to take a different approach and seek support. We found a robust support ecosystem for entrepreneurship and internationalization. The number of programs, grants, and assistance in Uruguay for startups is exceptional. Without a doubt, those resources were key to our project.

When we decided to formalize this path, the questions were: what exactly should we internationalize, where to, to whom, and with what model? Programs and consultants gave us a methodology—what to do and how to structure it. We brought persistence and invested more resources than we anticipated. It’s clearly a demanding journey, but one that becomes rewarding as opportunities start to materialize.

Thanks to that decision, we managed to balance the work we were losing in Uruguay and now have a team of 15 people and collaborators.

Until 2014, we worked exclusively in Uruguay. In 2015, after a small market study evaluating five countries, we chose Paraguay. We got on a plane, held dozens of meetings with industry players and potential clients. We went to learn—and incredibly came back with a signed contract.

We worked in Paraguay until 2017. In mid-2016, we traveled to Bolivia with a full meeting agenda. We saw lots of opportunity but realized it wasn’t the right time.

Six months later, conditions had improved, and we returned. In our field, you need to visit regularly to truly understand the market, whether or not projects arise.

In other countries, isolated opportunities have come from people we met abroad or who sought us out.

In 2012, hoping to create synergies in Spain, we began collaborating with an office in Zaragoza. It wasn’t until three years later that they started reaching out, and we landed amazing projects like Atlético de Madrid’s sports academy and an underground parking lot in Bilbao.

We learned the importance of understanding the target market, crafting a clear value proposition for each one, and defining your business model or strategy. Will you look for a distributor, a commercial rep, or establish a presence as a local actor?

It’s also important to identify and mitigate sales barriers, stay consistent, and build presence. In Uruguay, we’re few and well connected—what we do abroad helps all of us trying to export.

Facundo del Castillo
Engineer and founder of Ingenium

Saint Hnos.

I work in a family business. Every entrepreneur needs motivation—and in our case, it was necessity. In 2001, we had the chance to take over a brand with a long history in Uruguay. Our family launched the project from scratch in a fast-moving consumer goods market.

We stepped into the business and acquired a brand with over 100 years of heritage, dominating the local chocolate, sweets, and coffee market. But it was a heavy, outdated company.

For us, the 2002 crisis became an opportunity. We competed on equal footing with major multinationals, which allowed us to build momentum and fast-track growth.

Coffee—especially instant—was our top-selling product and part of our family’s experience. But we quickly diversified our product line to avoid relying on a single item, aiming for a broader, more resilient portfolio.

Our mass-market product needed a differentiator to compete regionally and internationally. Uruguay has just three million people, and our neighbors have massive markets. Competing with fast-moving, high-volume products is hard—unless you stand out.

In a small, competitive market, the best-prepared players have the best shot at success. That’s why I recommend the tools available in Uruguay to launch a project. Often, we don’t know they exist or don’t have time to look for them. But investing in training is worthwhile for internationalization later on.

We invested heavily in production technology, attended many courses, and participated in international missions—including reverse and tech-focused ones. We prioritized production, and that’s how we developed new products. Competing internationally forces you to be efficient and meet the highest standards. That, in turn, pushed us to professionalize our operations. We spotted business abroad because we became competitive.

We focused on becoming an organized company, with processes that now allow us to access international markets. Today, we’re in Mexico and El Salvador, and working to enter Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Chile.

We’re targeting countries with strong coffee cultures—where no one knows us. We arrive with a product that’s not even traditional in Uruguay. But the key is this: we’re not selling coffee—we’re selling production efficiency that includes coffee. That’s our differentiator.

Marco Picorel
Director of Saint Hnos.

Transparente Films

We provide production services for filming projects. Even though we have export experience and could develop an internationalization plan, we’re very interested in hiring an international advisor to bring a fresh perspective—especially regarding Uruguay’s fiscal programs and incentives for attracting audiovisual projects such as feature films, documentaries, and television series.

To that end, we actively participate in Uruguay XXI’s programs, visits, and trade missions. We’re deeply interested in internationalization initiatives.

Today, the models have changed significantly, and mobility and flexibility are the driving forces in audiovisual production.

Production services are somewhat of a commodity, meaning they carry little added value. So why do foreign productions choose to film in Uruguay? One factor is the climate—when it’s winter in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s summer here. Also: locations, casting, and cost. At the company level, we can’t compete on those elements—but we can offer production value, meaning the ability to find creative solutions to problems. That’s what we essentially are: problem solvers.

When we travel for a commercial visit, we’re not just selling our company or our creative value—we’re also representing Uruguay’s audiovisual industry. We’re selling the infrastructure, the talent, the technicians, their English fluency. Ultimately, we’re selling the country: its political and social stability, no foreign exchange complications, smooth currency transfers, temporary imports without hurdles, and visa-free entry for many. All of that is fantastic when going out to promote ourselves internationally.

Daniel Álvarez
Partner and Executive Producer at Transparente Films