Ricardo Salinas

* Ricardo Benjamín Salinas Pliego (b. in 1956) is a Mexican businessman and one of Forbes World's Richest People since 2000. He serves as President and CEO of Grupo Salinas and Grupo Elektra, two holdings with interests vested in telecommunications, media and retail stores, among those TV Azteca, Elektra, Iusacell, Unefon, and Banco Azteca.
* Grupo Salinas began as a family-owned furniture manufacturing company called Salinas & Rocha founded in 1906 by Mr. Salinas’ great-grandfather, Benjamin Salinas. In 1950, Mr. Salinas’ grandfather created Grupo Elektra, and when Ricardo Salinas became CEO of the company in 1987, Elektra averted financial distress following the devaluation of the peso. Mr. Salinas refocused Elektra on basic products: appliances, electronics, and furniture. Significantly, he developed at Elektra a vast new consumer market among Mexico’s lower middle income consumers by providing credit sales and diverse financial products and services. Grupo Elektra expanded further and became Mexico’s biggest consumer-finance company when, in 2002, it won the first banking license granted to any Mexican institution in nearly a decade. The strategy was to build new markets by creating new buying power among classes of people largely ignored by most other major Mexican businesses.

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Highlights

* Significantly, he developed at Elektra a vast new consumer market among Mexico’s lower middle income consumers by providing credit sales and diverse financial products and services.

==IDENTIFYING A NEW, LARGE MARKET FOR AN EXISTING PRODUCT LINE==