Our story
Twice rebuilt. Never moved.
Three generations of one family, on the same ground where they first sold fruit.
Goisco's story starts on another island.
Madeira, in the years after the war. Work was scarce and Curaçao had a refinery that was hiring. João Da Silva De Goes was four months old when his father left for the island — they would not see each other again for twenty-six years. Maria Isabel Caires Nobrega was fourteen when she followed her own father here in 1950, five years after he had gone ahead.
1950
The refinery sent them home. They started selling fruit.
When the refinery began releasing its immigrant workers, many of those families turned to the land. Maria Isabel's father was one of them. He started selling fruit, and called it Toko Fruteria Nobrega.
1964
João backed himself.
At nineteen he went to Caracas and spent seven years working in his brother-in-law's supermarket — learning a trade that barely existed in Curaçao yet. In 1964 he came here to meet the father he couldn't remember. He met Maria Isabel instead, married her, and stayed.
He opened a small toko of his own on Gosieweg, Toko Fruteria Ezperanza, and ran it himself. When Fruteria Nobrega became available he saw a location with more promise, closed his own shop, and took it on with two partners. They reopened it as Central Madeirense. Over the years he bought out one partner, then the other, until it was his alone.
1993
Then it burned.
In 1993, Central Madeirense burned to the ground.
1997
No produce aisle. On purpose.
Four years later, João and his sons opened Goisco. They had seen the wholesale clubs in the United States and believed the model could work here — buy in bulk, pay less — something nobody on the island had tried. It opened in 1997 without so much as a produce aisle.
2014
Then everything else arrived.
The produce came later, and so did the rest: household, kitchen, garden, clothing, electronics, appliances. Goisco grew out of being a wholesale club and into something the island didn't have a word for — a place where you can stock up for the month, pick up tonight's dinner, and leave with a fan you weren't looking for.
In 2014 another expansion took Schottegatweg past 10,000 m² of retail space under one roof — one of the largest stores in the Caribbean.
February 2025
The building Cost U Less left behind.
In February 2025, Goisco opened a second store on Jan Noorduynweg, in the building Cost U Less left behind.
Today
Same ground. A great deal more of it.
João's sons run Goisco today, with the third generation already working alongside them. It still stands on the same ground where the family first sold fruit.