In the late 1990s, Renato Valcarengh Nunes was a fixture of the city center in Caxias do Sul, a manufacturing hub in southern Brazil. At 17, his professional world was defined by the R$ 150 he earned monthly as an office boy—a role that required navigating the bureaucratic and physical landscape of the city on foot. It was a position of low leverage but high visibility, providing a ground-level view of how a service business functions from the bottom up.
Nunes’s trajectory at Exímia, a company specializing in printing and document management solutions, was not characterized by a sudden pivot or a venture-backed disruption. Instead, it followed a pattern of institutional absorption. Over two decades, he moved through the ranks of sales and operations, eventually positioning himself to acquire the company from its original owners. This transition from errand-runner to proprietor reflects a rare form of corporate continuity, where the institutional memory of the entry-level employee eventually becomes the guiding logic of the boardroom.
Today, Exímia operates at a significantly different scale than the firm Nunes joined as a teenager. With an annual revenue of R$ 77 million, the company has transitioned from simple hardware leasing to a more sophisticated model of digital document outsourcing and workflow management. In an era where many entrepreneurs seek to build and exit quickly, Nunes’s story is a study in the long-arc value of staying in place—transforming a foundational understanding of regional logistics into a dominant enterprise.
With reporting from Exame Inovação.
Source · Exame Inovação
