BRAZIL. We report with great sadness the death of Samuel Kauffmann, a pioneer of South American travel retail.
Samuel, who turned 80 earlier this month, was one of the most influential figures in the region’s duty free and travel retail business. He was a long-time Managing Director at Brazil’s leading travel retailer, Brasif (now owned by Dufry) and a founding board member of South American duty free association ASUTI. He was Vice President of ASUTIL from 1998 until 2002 and President from 2003 to 2005.
“With deep sorrow we report the death of Samuel Kauffmann,” said ASUTIL. “Samuel was part of the driving team of ASUTIL, and is one of its founders, as well as its President for several years. Thanks to his contribution and determination, ASUTIL is now 24 years old.
“All of us who work with him, and shared years of effort and camaraderie, will remember him with great respect and appreciation since besides being a great professional he was above all a great person. R.I.P.”
ASUTIL Secretary General Jose Luis Donagaray said: “The duty free business in the America loses one of its iconic promoters and defenders. ASUTIL loses one of its founders, a former President and a great supporter in all times. We all lose a friend and an excellent person who was always open for a chat and to give everyone advice. May he rest in peace.”
Donagaray recalled how Samuel Kauffmann and fellow Brasif executive Santos de Araújo Fagundes had been part of a determined band of regional travel retail players who had met in Rio de Janeiro in early 1994 to discuss the creation of an association to defend and advance the industry’s interests in the region. That desire found voice in ASUTIL, which duly held its inaugural assembly on 29 September 1995.
“Samuel from the beginning was the delegate of Brasif in ASUTIL and was President from 1/2003 to 12/2005,” Donagaray said. “He never missed one board meeting, while at the same time he was a member of the Board of IAADFS.”
At ASUTIL’s 2014 annual conference in Mexico City, Samuel was honoured with a lifetime contribution award. He also attended last year’s conference in Rio de Janeiro. “He was really satisfied that the association he founded and dreamed of in the early 90s was in a continuous growth, [as well as with] the level of the conferences and the international position of ASUTIL,” said Donagaray.
From The Moodie Davitt Report Found & Chairman Martin Moodie: Time is slipping inexorably by. Too many pioneers and friends gone. Sam was such a warm, reassuring part of the South American travel retail business for so many years that it feels like a piece of the regional business landscape itself has been removed.
I got to know Sam well in the 1990s when I ran DFNI, especially after my long-term colleague Desmond Begg (RIP) and I visited him and the ASUTIL board in Miami to discuss organising the conference on their behalf. Sam’s personal support and friendship ensured the success of that visit and, much more importantly, the creation and longevity of a role model regional travel retail association. He was a man of great personal integrity and kindness, who preferred to do his work and his talking out of the public spotlight.
“We have a past of accomplishment and a future of ambition,” he said during his President’s official opening of the 2004 conference in Salvador, Brazil. They were watchwords not just for ASUTIL but for a regional business sector that was modernising fast. Sam was not a voluminous speechmaker but his words were always carefully chosen and carefully listened to.
In 2014, The Moodie Report (now The Moodie Davitt Report) published ‘From the Rio Grande to Tierra del Fuego, a landmark publication which celebrated the compelling story of Latin America’s duty free industry. Samuel Kauffman’s contribution stands out like a beacon in those pages.
“For a long time only upper-class consumers were travelling in South America,” he reflected in an interview for the book. “Then we saw some upper-middle-class in the stores; but since the start of this century the middle classes have been travelling like never before and buying like the Class A people used to do. Fashion and brand names are important to them. We had only small areas in the shops for fashion, but today the spaces are enormous.”
That transition, played out across categories, countries and commercial enterprises, leaves South America’s travel retail industry virtually unrecognisable from that of 1994, when ASUTIL was founded. Samuel Kauffmann’s vision and legacy of accomplishment and ambition will ensure the sector continues to thrive for years to come.
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