Built to scale
Expand into Latin Americaand beyond.
Leadership
Founders and Partners
The relationships are theirs. That is the whole point.
Brian Smith
Founder & Chairman
Former Global President & COO, The Coca-Cola Company
25+ years at The Coca-Cola Company. Brian held key leadership positions across Latin America, including President of the Brazil and Mexico divisions, before later leading the EMEA group. In 2019, he became Global President and COO before retiring in 2022. Recognized for his global vision and operational expertise, Brian played a pivotal role in Coca-Cola’s international growth.
Former General Director Estrella Galicia Brazil
Founder & Managing Partner
Thiago Coelho is an international executive who has led large-scale consumer businesses across Latin America as General Manager, Vice President and General Director, in some of the region’s most competitive markets, including Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Perú.
Today, as an entrepreneur, he focuses on the premium and super-premium consumer goods segment, connecting global brands with local operations across the region and driving their consolidation and growth.
Coelho is also an influential voice on LinkedIn, named Top Voice in 2024, with more than 120,000 followers.
Our Brands
High Potential Brands
The Starting Point
Scaling businesses through
a powerful ecosystem.
Brands
Global brands
Want to grow beyond their current borders, without shifting their focus on the main markets.
Operators
Local operators
They have structure, route to market and team. What they need: powerful brands that move the market.
Capital
Potential
Assets with real returns, underwritten by people who understand the categories and the business.
Executives
Senior executives
Decades of experience that runs from strategy all the way down to the consumer’s hands.
The cost of finding the path, carrying the risk and running the operation is what stops brands from entering or expanding — in Brazil, across Latin America and beyond.
The bridge is not one-way.
Same work, same network, multiple directions — and most of our conversations start on one side and end up on both.
Into the region →
A global brand lands in Latin America
You keep the brand. We pick the operator, negotiate the licence, joint venture or business unit, and stay accountable for how it’s run — while you keep your capital and your team where they are.
This is how Liquid Death came into Brazil and Central America.
← Out of the region
A Latin brand goes to the world
The region builds excellent brands that stop at the border because nobody knows who to sell them to. We open the same doors in reverse: the operator, the distributor and the strategic partner abroad.
Our partners spent decades on the other side of that table — at Coca-Cola and Estrella Galicia.
The Model
We know who operates.
Which distributor really covers the northeast. Which family group answers the phone. Which co-packer holds the quality standard a global brand will accept. Twenty+ years of running businesses here is the only way to know that — and it is the part a new entrant cannot buy.
We don’t operate.
We choose who operates, we stay accountable for the choice, and we hold a share of the result. Where a category has no operator yet, we can build the first route ourselves — then hand it over and keep the equity.
We don’t sell hours.
The price is participation, not a timesheet. If the business doesn’t happen, we don’t get paid — which is exactly why we only take deals we believe will happen.
We’re not a consultancy.
A consultancy delivers a recommendation and leaves. We deliver the meeting, the counterparty, the structure — and then stay in the deal.
The balance sheet is light. The assets are heavy.
Rio Global Brands
Local heritage.
Global reach.
Four lines of work,
one network behind them.
Brands
We take brands across borders, both ways
Licence, joint venture or a business unit inside an existing company.
We design the structure that fits the brand, the operation and local compliance — and hold a share of what gets built.
Credit
We provide financial services the industries we work with
Cureted by people by people who have run the category.
Working capital for companies that need to grow. Debt restructuring for companies that need to recover and grow — not just survive. Risk read by operators, not by spreadsheets.
Access
We put the decision makers in the same room
The brand owner to the right operator. The investor to the right asset.
We connect companies to the stakeholders who can actually move a decision — with speed and judgement at every step.
Events & education
We turn operating experience into content
Formats we own, and the operating history behind them.
Events, courses, talks and curated gatherings where we share what we have run. Learning that turns into lasting relationships.
Each one feeds the next. All of them come back to access.
We don’t own a factory or a fleet.
We own the relationships.
What we don’t carry
- Plants, fleet or inventory
- An operation to run day to day
- Capital locked into physical assets
- A large team to scale revenue
What we do carry
- Global brands that trust us
- Local operators we already know
- Relationships built over decades of operating
- A stake in every business we create
Our Brands
Liquid Death
The fastest-growing beverage brand in the US, now entering Latin America with us.
Mondial de la Bière
The largest beer festival in Latin America — 40,000 people over four days at Pier Mauá — growing into a Beer Ecosystem Platform.
Maui Brewing Co.
Hawaii’s largest independent brewery and our coastal brand for Brazil.
High Potential Brands
Vital Life
Scaling Brazil’s premium hydration brand across national territory and into new markets across the Americas.
Work With Us
For global brands
Come into the region
Sell across Latin America through an operator we’ve already vetted, without opening a company here.
For regional brands
Take your brand out
You’ve won in Brazil and stopped at the border. We open the same doors in reverse — operator, distributor, strategic partner abroad.
For operators
Add a brand
You already have the structure and the route to market. We bring the brand your customers are asking for.
For capital
Back the deal
Consumer-goods opportunities originated and underwritten by people who have run the category.
For executives and operators
Build Rio with us
Every deal we sign needs someone senior to run it. We’re assembling the group of executives and operators who take these brands to market — as partners in the business, not as headcount. If you’ve run a category, a country or a route to market, this is the door.
The Roster Alongside our leadership, a group of seasoned operators, partners and advisors works on every business we build, bringing experience from some of the world's leading companies.
Fernanda Raizama Role: Executive Team General Director - Liquid Death Brasil
Contact
Twenty minutes to tell us which side of the bridge you’re on so we can tell you who is waiting on the other side.
Contact Rio Global Brands
Built to Scale
© 2026 Rio Global Brands