Cotton Candy Art: R$600K/Year Business in Brazil

How Did a Cotton Candy Sculptor Build a Six-Figure Business?

Alírio Ribeiro, 38, spent years working as an industrial maintenance coordinator in Curitiba, Paraná. After the devastating loss of his daughter at birth, he turned to art for comfort — sketching, painting, and browsing the internet for inspiration. A video of a Chinese artisan sculpting cotton candy changed everything.

What Is Fios de Fada and How Did It Start?

Ribeiro launched Fios de Fada (Fairy Threads) in 2019, specializing in artistic cotton candy sculptures. The road was anything but smooth: more than a year of research, failed experiments with the wrong machines and wrong sugar, and even the loss of his initial R$ 4,000 investment when he discovered the original business name was already trademarked.

How Did the Pandemic Affect the Business?

Just as operations were ready to launch, COVID-19 hit. The first real revenue didn't arrive until late 2020 — small orders of cotton candy in jars and bags that earned roughly R$ 200. Ribeiro had originally planned to use live sculpting events as a marketing tool for a packaged product line, but the market had other ideas.

What Made the Business Take Off?

When celebrations returned in late 2021, demand exploded. Word of mouth spread fast. "At every event I did, I was closing four, five, or six new bookings," Ribeiro recalls. By the first half of 2021, his calendar for all of 2022 was nearly full. To keep up, he scaled investment from R$ 4,000 to R$ 50,000, adding machines, uniforms, tables, a website, and a stronger digital presence.

What Are the Results Today?

Fios de Fada generated approximately R$ 600,000 in revenue in 2025, turning a grief-driven creative search into a thriving niche business. Ribeiro's story illustrates how a hyper-specific craft — one almost unknown in Brazil — can become a scalable enterprise with the right persistence and market timing.