In the building number 83 of the Assembleia street, in the city center of Rio de Janeiro, was installed in 1912 a subsidiary of the firm Mestre & Blatgé, based in Paris and specialized in the trading of machinery and equipment.

Four years after its installation, its administration was handed over to French Louis La Saigne, previously deputy manager of the branch in Buenos Aires.

In 1924, La Saigne transformed the Rio establishment in an autonomous firm, with the name Sociedade Anônima Brasileira Estabelecimentos Mestre et Blatgé, which in 1939 changed its name to Mesbla S.A.

The concern was that at the beginning of World War II France has expressed solidarity to Adolf Hitler, which could lead to reprisals in Brazil with reference to the name.

In the following year, on August 12, 1962, Mesbla celebrated its Golden Jubilee already as a genuinely Brazilian company, with more than 8 000 employees operating in 13 branches, retail stores and sales agencies established in strategic parts of the country.

Employees took pride in stating that Mesbla just did not sell coffins, which are for the dead; for the living they had all the goods, from buttons to cars, boats and airplanes.

When it decided to increase the sale of clothing and bed and table linen, the articles were exposed next to machines and equipment, traditional goods of the company.

A marketing consulting firm was hired, and Mesbla stores have undergone a complete overhaul, with changes in the decoration of shops, arrangement of windows, salespeople uniforms and customer communication.

At the end of the Sarney administration in 1989, the board, believing that the country was heading to an hyperinflation, began to stock excess goods and basically relied on funds generated by its financial institute.

The advent of the Plano Real, with the end of high inflation, showed the weaknesses of Mesbla, and the company began to face constant losses, which it tried to solve with closing stores and dismissal of employees.

Compounding, it had to face competition from foreign department stores and hypermarkets, with ease of raising capital abroad at lower interest rates.

To fulfill the wishes of a daughter, he commissioned from a renowned architect from São Paulo a dollhouse, worth 300 000 dollars, which was installed on his farm in Indaiatuba.

In 2009, it was advertised the comeback of Mesbla: an e-commerce company negotiated the purchase of name usage rights with Mansur and intended to open a site aimed at women in March 2010, with official launch in May of the same year.