Interview with business CEO Fernando Carlison Jr.
Fernando Carlison Jr. is the owner and CEO of Vegas VIP Limousine and Mundi Limos. Combined, the two businesses have a fleet of more than 65 company-owned vehicles and dozens of operational partners all around the world. Based in Miami since 2008, the Brazilian entrepreneur started in the business as a private chauffeur.
In this interview, Carlison Jr. talks about how he entered the industry and provides an insider’s view on the luxury ground transportation market. He also speaks of how covid-19 hit his business and shares his plans for the future.
Interviewer: What was your work field before, and how did end up in the limousine business?
Fernando Carlison Jr.: I used to work with my father in the stock market in Brazil. As I saw little opportunity to grow my business in my home country, I moved to America in 2008. Then, I started working as a valet. I would work long hours and get some nice tips from my customers.
Sometime after that, my father came across an advertisement for a BMW vehicle. I believe that was the starting point of the business I own today. After that, I worked as a driver. Fast forward a few years, I bought my first vehicle and would offer my services to already established limousine companies.
I: How did that work exactly?
FJ: Well, I started out by visiting limousine companies and offering my car to represent their business whenever they had an overflow. I started having many rides from these companies. Of course, it was always their customer, so they would charge the customer and give me part of the proceedings. Then I thought that I needed my own customers.
I: So who got to be your customers?
FJ: I would go to private aviation and FBO events and do networking basically. Little by little, I started leveraging my business with my own customers. At that point, I would still work for other limousine companies because that cash flow helped me grow my business. That way I had a diverse portfolio.
I: Tell us more about how your business grew.
FJ: After I had the means of increasing my fleet, it came to a point where I couldn’t drive cars anymore, because I had to focus on management. I had to start hiring chauffeurs. So, I first hired Brazilian workers. They would come over to my house, pick up the car and gt on with their rides. After some confidence was built, some drivers kept the vehicles with them until their next ride. Nowadays, we have a huge parking lot for all vehicles. We went from 3 to 60 limousines in a few years.
I: How did you increase your customer portfolio?
FJ: Word of mouth, basically. I believe we have to grow organically. That way, our results are sustainable in the long run. In that sense, we take our customers very seriously. Our dispatchers offer high-level service and are always aware of everything that goes on during a ride. If anything goes off, we summon that driver and offer extra training.
Along with customers, we also hold our employees in high regard. We try to keep our turnover rate as low as possible. Sometimes, chauffeurs will leave us for a while to work for our competitors. Most of them come back after some time because they realize e are actually a great place to work.
I: Can you talk a little bit about how the pandemic affected your business?
FJ: Right after Superbowl 2020, we had a huge customer pipeline, we were on fire really. When covid hit, I stuck to the plan and kept on buying what we needed and keeping our employees. I am an optimist, so I thought it would really go away in a couple of weeks. But, as we all know, it didn’t.
For two months, we had zero rides a day. Then it started to slowly come back. At that point, I still believed that it would be over by June 2020. We were lucky we had had great income from Superbowl 2020 so that supported us for some time. As we had very few rides, we thought it would be a good moment to start a new marketing strategy.
We started contacting other businesses and offering to place a link to our website. If someone booked a ride from their link, they would get a commission. It’s what we call affiliated links. So that’s what we did: we organized the house while we didn’t have any rides. In the meantime, we even worked in partnership with Bank of America, we would take nurses and doctors to different places for covid tests.
I: And how do you see the impact of covid now (as of March 2022)?
FJ: During covid, private aviation went up a lot, since people were afraid of getting on a commercial flight. This ended up bringing us new customers. So good things happened for us. It was a sad time for many limousine companies that went bankrupt during the last two years. As a result, we grew our market share.
So, looking back, we actually increased our operations after covid-19. We had had a great year in 2019, then in 2020 we obviously performed below our expectations. In 2021, however, our performance was twice that of 2019. For 2022, we are aiming for 15-20% growth in operations.
Chauffeured Transportation As A Growing Business
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