Wedding Bucks?

Brazil's leading jeweler and a U.S. Web site tie the knot.

TWO YEARS AGO, KARIN CAGY, A 27-year-old Rio fashion designer, dedicated tedious days preparing for her wedding. With a small notebook in hand, she and her mother, Pnina, made a list of the crucial needs for her big day, or o grande dia, as it's called in Portuguese. That included where to hold the party, which store to use for gift registry and where to find a florist, a photographer and a limousine driver. Good taste at a reasonable cost were high priorities and that meant shopping around.

In the following months, mother and daughter spent hours investigating each option and often arrived home late at night after getting caught in Rio's chaotic rush-hour traffic. But any unpleasant memories quickly faded after o grande dia arrived. Their marathon efforts paid off with a beautiful wedding bash at the famed Copacabana Palace Hotel.

About-to-wed cariocas may, however, no longer have to work so hard for the same result. They can now make their wedding plans with just the click of a computer mouse. In June, H. Stern, a major Brazil-based international jeweler and specialty retailer, and theknot.com, the leading U.S. online wedding resource, launched a US$10 million joint venture called www.ograndedia.com.br.

It's a Portuguese-language wedding Web site and gift registry that targets the estimated annual market of more than 1 million couples in Brazil. The service will initially focus only on middle- and upper-class Rio and Sao Paulo residents and is free of charge. The venture expects to generate revenue by charging for advertisments and taking a cut of the site's e-commerce revenues.

"We will provide resources and advice for those about to wed, while adapting U.S. content," says Roberto Stern, vice president of H. Stern, in an interview at his lavish Rio office.

Ograndedia.com.br not only helps noivas plan and budget items for their big day step-by-step, it offers advice by experts and publishes photos of the weddings online.

Three similar Web sites have recently been launched and offer virtually the same service minus the gift registry: bemcasados.com.br; osnoivos.com.br and central-de-noivas.com.br.

Online and in-store registry. Stern says his competitors have merely copied theknot.com's Web site, but will be unable to duplicate its database and such options as software geared to the exact time needed to prepare the wedding, ranging from as little as one month to eight months. For example, theknot.com has interactive planning tools and databases that include 20,000 wedding gowns and 10,000 online registry items such as china, crystal, flatware and other luxury items.

An added service offered by the alliance of H. Stern/theknot.com, Stern argues, is the integration of an online and in-store registry, providing clients with easy access to gift registry by computer at one of several major gift stores in either Rio or Sao Paulo, including, of course, H. Stern, which has 160 stores in 11 countries, including 15 at international airports around the world.

While store gift registry has been common in Brazil for some years now, it is expected to get a major boost from ograndedia.com . "It will avoid the most boring thing after the wedding--going to each store to change gifts you received in double or triple, or that you didn't like," says Cagy, who spent two weeks going to the three gift shops where she had registered.

Heloisa Soares, a 37-year-old engineer who was choosing a wedding gift at an Ipanema store, sees other online benefits. "There are advantages to shopping by computer that go far beyond geographical convenience--the screen sits there quietly, quite different from salesmen who often raise their eyebrows at your choices," she says.

Nuptial crisis? Despite the apparent enthusiasm, H. Stern's venture may be stifled by a weak market. According to official figures, the number of annual newlyweds is far less than the projected 1 million. The last Brazilian census in 1995 showed 734,045 weddings that year, or roughly 0.5% of the population. Moreover, just 37% of an estimated 4 million Brazilian cybernauts are women, who in macho Brazil typically organize most aspects of their weddings. Based on those figures, only 75,000 female Web users will marry this year.

Moreover, most Brazilians cannot afford expensive weddings. In Brazil, which has one of the world's most skewed distributions of wealth, 10% of the population controls 50% of the nation's wealth. "It's a narrow potential market," notes Jack London, who covers the Internet for Exame, the country's leading business magazine.

Stern disagrees, offering another scenario for his venture's assured success. "Weddings will always exist even if they don't last for long," says recently divorced Stem.

The 42-year-old, who runs the store chain with his brothers Ricardo and Ronaldo, is known as an innovative executive. In 1994, he spurred sluggish end-of-the-year sales by raffling an expensive Mercedes-Benz automobile. More recently, he asked Anna Bella Geiger, Internationally renowned Brazilian artist, to design a line of jewelry to honor the 500th anniversary of the Portuguese presence in Brazil. He decided to look for an Internet venture after a professor at Harvard Business School called him a "dinosaur" for avoiding the Internet to expand his business.

Certainly the Stern family is steeped in tradition. Hans Stem, the store-chain's founder and a European immigrant, is a Brazilian Horatio Alger. His rags-to-riches story began in 1939 after he fled the Nazis and arrived in Brazil. At first, he worked as a typist for a gem company, where he learned the business of precious stones. In 1945, he traveled to the state of Minas Gerais with money he received from the sale of an accordion. There he negotiated deals with wildcat miners to supply him with gems and an empire was born.

While the new Internet venture reflects the empire's efforts to remain at the forefront of evolving consumer demand, Marcel Sapir, H. Stern's financial director, says he doesn't think traditions have changed that much. "Brazilians value traditional weddings much more than in the United States' he says. "People spend more here than there; even those who lack resources save their money for three or four years to pay for a wedding party.