When mobile giant Sprint needed a CEO, it came to Miami to find Marcelo Claure. Now, he’s bringing major change to the Fortune 100 Company—and to Miami’s soccer landscape.
Marcelo Claure at his home in Miami Beach.
As the recently installed CEO of Sprint, Spr is coming to terms with his new Midwestern place of business. “Leading Sprint in Kansas City is like leading Microsoft in Seattle,” says Claure, the self-made cell phone titan who turned the Miami-based Brightstar Corp. into an $8 billion enterprise. “Everybody has something to do with Sprint—the wife of the decorator is the lawyer for Sprint or an accountant at Sprint.”
This self-described “global citizen,” who was born in Guatemala, raised in Bolivia, and has touched down in some 125 countries over the course of his 44 years, shouldn’t have any trouble pressing palms with his Kansas neighbors. But Claure has far more daunting matters to attend to. Last fall, reports surfaced that Sprint, the number-three wireless carrier in the US, had cut its 2014 earnings forecast by roughly $1 billion, and the stock fell more than 16 percent, to its lowest value since Japan’s SoftBank acquired the company in July 2013.
Claure and David Beckham at Verde after the press conference to discuss the future plans for a Miami Major League Soccer team last February.
But if anyone is equipped to turn the tide, Claure believes it’s him. The scrappy, hard-driving entrepreneur built Brightstar from the ground up, founding the company with some friends in Miami in 1997 and turning it into the largest cell phone distribution network in South America. “Miami gives you the appetite and the flavor to want to become a global company,” Claure says. “If you are a citizen of Miami, you are automatically an international citizen because of the diversity of people that you meet [here]. Miami is where many cultures mix and exist together…. If you asked me 10 years ago would I ever dream that I would be the CEO of a Fortune 100 company, I would have said that was beyond my capability, beyond a dream.”
When Sprint came calling, however, Claure didn’t exactly jump at the opportunity. He balked when Softbank’s leader (and Sprint’s chairman), Masayoshi Son, first approached him. “I said, ‘I don’t think I’m qualified; you can find other people who have run carriers and can do a better job,’” Claure recalls. “And he said, ‘No, the reason I want to hire you is that everything you do, you do to win. Your success and passion to be the best are what we need.’”
While Claure has his work cut out for him—“It is a company that has been losing more customers than it has been gaining,” he admits—he’s already making big changes. Last winter, he undertook a major management shuffle that sent the then-CMO packing. “We’re applying the same concept as we did at Brightstar—coming up with basic ways to connect with the customers—and applying the basic principle that I learned: Make sure your customers find it easy to do business with you. We are going to offer simple plans that customers can understand.”
Marc Anthony, Jennifer Lopez, and Marcelo and Jordan Claure at the Ice Palace for Marcelo’s 40th birthday in 2010.
Although his company is headquartered in the Midwest, Claure returns frequently to his home in Miami Beach to be with his family. “We spend a lot of time on the boat, and we’ll have dinner at Zuma and just spend time with the kids during the day,” he says. “Miami is one of the most beautiful and sexy cities in the world, with lots of great diversity.”
Claure is also channeling his drive to win into the goal of bringing professional soccer to Miami. “I got in a discussion the other day with Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple,” he says, “and we started talking about no-brainers in the world. One of the no brainers to Tim is Apple Pay,” the service that stores credit card information on your phone for quick, efficient payments. The other? “It makes no sense for Miami not to have a soccer team. It’s the most cosmopolitan city in the US, where the people love and understand soccer. I will do whatever it takes to finally bring soccer to Miami.”
Claure has a powerful partner in this quest: David Beckham, whom he calls “honest, hard-working, just a tremendous individual, and one who is committed to winning and committed to success.” Together they’re making progress. “It’s not years away; it’s more like weeks and months away. Both David and I are committed to bringing soccer to Miami.”