By Sérgio Barbará Filho – Founder

In 2000, after graduating in Design from PUC-Rio and after all of us survived the “Y2K bug,” I started my first (and only!) experience as a formally employed staff member at a company.

I was invited by Andrei Quartin, a first-rate designer (and still a friend of mine to this day, of course) to join the team responsible for developing the first website for OSKLEN, at the time a new brand that was gaining prominence.

The experience was complete. I was put in charge of registering the domain www.osklen.com.br, and from there we began a journey to create, develop, maintain and update the company’s website, which didn’t sell online yet.

At the time (2001), the technological bottlenecks of e-commerce (inventory control, payments, logistics) were still being solved by the industry, and while e-commerce hadn’t gotten off the ground, our team was responsible for representing the brand in the digital space.

Also part of this “dream team” were Bernardo Alevato, Andres Pinilla, Georgeana Godinho, and, some time later, Yan Grossman, with our team closely coordinated by the “Boss.”

Already in 2001, my “solid experience” (that’s ironic) in web projects led me to join the Redley team, where I was invited by the growth and e-commerce powerhouse, Pedro Guinle.

I switched teams and became responsible for developing, maintaining and updating the brand’s website (www.redley.com.br).

The dynamic was quite different from Osklen, since I was the sole person responsible for the digital area, working alongside talents like Fernando Modenesi and Winnie Colvin in Marketing, Edu Moura and Fabio Lopez in Graphic Design and POS (point of sale, the stores that received the graphic materials). Coordination was handled by Peter Simon, closely supported by Tommy Simon, and some time later taken over by Leo Ferreira.

The structure conceptually resembled a triangle, where each vertex needed to coordinate and communicate clearly and objectively with the other two: Marketing dictated the schedule, the VPD (Visual Programming Department) dictated the concept, prints and coordinated the entire production of the catalogs twice a year, as dictated by the seasonal rules for retail and fashion companies.

By then, I was already doing several freelance jobs in addition to working on the Redley project, and the natural path was to open a company, with a tax ID and everything official.

At the time, the “trend” was for design studios to carry their founders’ names, but I felt that format didn’t suit me. I wanted, one day, for the brand I was forging to not depend exclusively on my own presence.

During a Redley collection changeover, deadlines got compressed to the point that the site’s launch simply wasn’t going to happen, not even by a miracle.

I called a meeting with our “Triangle” at Redley and explained, clearly and objectively, that it wasn’t going to be possible to update the site alongside the stores, as we always did.

A direct conversation, with no noise, no excuses, completely honest: PURA.

As bad as the scenario seemed, the team understood, we adjusted course and moved forward to execute the viable plan. (Spoiler: the delay ended up having no meaningful impact on the operation.)

It was in that moment, right after that meeting, that the name Pura Comunicação was “invented.” Not as a creative catharsis inspired by the gods or by some brilliant advertiser, but as a process, as a method.

If communication is PURE, processes flow in a positive and transparent way, with no noise.

That’s how, in March 2002, Pura Comunicação was officially born. A company, a tax ID, but, more than that, a process and a method that, almost 25 years later, still prove true and effective in everything we do.

That’s why we’re always proud to say: welcome to Pura Comunicação!

* Andres Pinilla and Winnie Colvin, mentioned here, have left us, but will always remain part of this story.