Bookazine 08 Cover 2 (fin).

Transcription

SPECIAL
EDITION
SPECIAL
STORIES
EDITION
P195
Be inspired by these 67 success stories of men and women
interviewed by ENTREPRENEUR Philippines. Learn—and profit—from their words, lives and
experiences, from conceptualizing to establishing their businesses,
from the challenging years to more stable times.
To the entrepreneur in all of us, here is a sample of what they have to say:
‘We all have
the potential
to be better
than what
we are.’
Butch Albarracin
Center
for Pop Music
‘It’s a love
a�air between the
client
and the product.’
Ino Caluza
Viktor Jeans
‘You don’t have third
parties telling you to
maximize profits.’
Francisco
Licuanan III
Geo Estate
Development Corp.
‘The challenge for us
now
is to find a new role
in this
new world.’
Robertson Chiang
Mozcom
‘One of the best
things we did was
getting outside help.’
Paulo Tibig
V-Cargo
‘If we don’t
get the best price, we
can’t sell for the
best price.’
Socorro Ramos
National Bookstore
‘If everyone were
beautiful,
then appearances
would be
less of
a factor.’
Vicki Belo
Belo Medical Group
INNOVATORS: Butch Albarracin Center for Pop Music • Boots Alcantara Casa San Pablo • Angeli Beltran-Lambsdor� Sugarnot • Ino Caluza Viktor
Jeans • Ian Carandang, Tony Bondoc and Vito Lazatin Sebastian’s Ice Cream Studio • Reyvic Cerilles and Joseph Jagoring Estetico Manila • Robertson
Chiang Mozcom • Derrick Chiongbian Holy Kettle Corn • Bayani Coching Mercury Freight International • Charlie Dobles and Drew Marcelo Spoofs Limited
• Mark Dulag K-yong Spirits • Mario Elumba Adventure One Scuba Diving Centre • Sonny Francisco Ferino’s Bibingka • Freddy Gonzalez Aloha Board
Sports • Vincent Grey Ventaja International • Joey Gurango Gurango So�ware • Paul Huang Fire Lake Grill • Ariel Jersey EZ Maps • Francisco Licuanan
III Geo Estate Development • Edmun Liu Basic Graphics • Em Mariano Business FUNDynamics • Jun Ongteco Wishcra� • Vicente Padilla Fun Ranch •
Redentor Ragojos Ragojos Heritage Construction • Ricky Sta. Ana Skinworkz • Glenn Anthony Soco Co�ee Dream • Che and Ricky Soler GoodAh!!!
• Tanny Syfu Tri-Isys Internet • Eric Tan MPower Asia • Jimmy Thai Primer Group • Paulo Tibig V-Cargo • Tom Viray Orient Integrated Commercial
• Marianito Vito Jr. Vito Prints and Pieces • Albert Yu Asya Design Partner ALL IN THE FAMILY: Alejandro family Papemelroti • Mary Grace ArboledaYoung Cordillera Co�ee • Cecille Co RJ Jewelry • Conrado Escudero Villa Escudero • Felix Garcia and family Mekeni Food • Jose Miguel Geronimo Gerry
Geronimo Productions • Loly and Buzz Gomez Philippine Treasures • Mark Gorriceta Freska • Teresa and Francis Guanzon Bangko Kabayan • Jaafar
sisters The 50th Avenue • Sheila and Bertrand Pesayco Writer’s Edge • Socorro Ramos and family National Bookstore • Flor and Susan Velasco Flor-San’s
Handicra� • Reynaldo and Leticia Vergara RL Vercons Merchants TOP WOMEN & CELEBRITIES: Jericho Aguas and Isabel Granada Aguas Pawnshop •
Maya Batac-Lagdameo MKJ Service Link • Vicki Belo Belo Medical Group • Gina Butler, Mozzy Ravena and Miren Padilla Pink Salon • Ryan Cayabyab
The Music Studio • Melissa Floirendo and partners Regatta • Josie Go Karimadon • Mildred Gococo Boy Busog • Joby Linsangan Orange Blush Salon •
Catherine Lopez-Uy A Di�erent Bookstore • Shaina Magdayao Ystilo Salon • Ping Medina PenPen Comfort Food Araw-Araw • Cesar Montano Bellissimo
Ristorante • Happy Ongpauco and Allana Montelibano The Boutique Bed and Breakfast • Gingerie Red Kumon Learning Center franchise • Gladys Reyes
KSA Magic • Dina Salonga SQL Wizard • Annabel Santos-Wisniewski Museum Café • Claude Tayag Bale Dutung
ISSN 8885-1958
00
9 778885 195005
HOW
YOU TOO
CAN
MAKE IT
BIG!
STORIES
TOP WOMEN & CELEBRITIES
Alternate
routes
T
he world of business
is no longer
the preserve of
men, and in the
Philippines, a lot of
women have shown
that they can run
businesses as well—
if not better—than
their male counterparts. On top of this,
business is also seeing the entry into its turf
of more and more celebrities—TV, movie,
and stage actors and actresses, singers,
musicians, and the like—looking for more
stable investment vehicles for the big money
they usually earn in the fickle entertainment
industry.
The pages that follow tell the stories
2 ENTREPRENEUR 2008
of 23 women and nine celebrities—four of
whom straddle both categories—who have
taken the entrepreneurial route and have
made good doing so. Some of them had
been born with the proverbial silver spoon
in the mouth but wanted to prove that they
can make good in business on their own;
others went into business after they had
already made a mark in their respective
professions; still others went into business
ventures that could give fuller expression to
their art or craft; and the rest simply needed
a durable and profitable business in which to
invest their hard-earned money. In their own
unique ways, though, how they built their
respective businesses and how they run
them are entrepreneurial roadmaps that are
definitely worth looking into.
2008 ENTREPRENEUR 3
Jericho Aguas
and Isabel Granada
Aguas Pawnshop
Being an employee ‘was
simply too strenuous for me’
By Leah B. del Castillo
A
Photos by Thaddeus Reantaso
loss in politics and its consequent financial setback could be serious career-busters, but for actor Jericho
Aguas, they gave him the motivation to really focus on what he knows
best—running a business.
More popularly known as Geryk Genaskey (he
had adopted the surname of his maternal grandfather, Rudy Genaskey, for his screen name), Jericho
Aguas comes from a family that has been doing
business for many years in their home province of
Pampanga. His paternal grandfather, Tomas Aguas,
was a pioneer in the money-changing business in
the province.
Jericho Aguas studied to become an engineer,
graduating in 2001 with a Bachelor of Science degree in electronics and communications engineering (ECE) from the De La Salle University in Taft,
Manila. When he later trained with the local office of a multinational company, however, he realized that ECE was not the career for him.
“I experienced the feeling of beExcept for a
ing an employee,” he recalls. “I nevbrief detour
er really wanted to regularly wake
into politics,
up at 7:00 a.m., to sit down at my
the Aguas
desk, wait for lunch, wait for snack
couple has
time, then finally leave the office
found their
at 5:00 p.m. The work wasn’t tir- true calling in
ing, but staying inside the building
business.
4 ENTREPRENEUR 2008
and wearing a jacket because it was cold in the office was simply too much of a routine. It was simply too strenuous for me.”
So, after graduation, Aguas decided not to take
the ECE board examination. Instead, he chose to
be a commercial and ramp model, taking on the
name by which he was to become more popularly known.
While modeling for a commercial, he met the
actress Isabel Granada, also one of the country’s
few licensed female pilots. The two got married in
2002 and settled in Angeles City, Jericho’s hometown.
It was there that the Aguas couple first ventured
into business. With financial help from Jericho’s
grandmother, Malu Aguas, they put up an Internet
café. They called it the Countersite Internet Café
to capitalize on the name recall of Counterstrike, a
popular video game. The couple became the store’s
hands-on managers, with Jericho handling the business side and Isabel, the customer side.
The Internet café gave the couple very handsome
returns on their P1 million initial investment, enabling them to also put up an ink refilling station,
Need for Ink, a year later.
It was also due to this business that Aguas made
an unplanned detour into politics. In 2004, he recalls, the Angeles City government took issue
against the proliferation of Internet cafes in the city.
Aguas was aghast to learn that a young city councilor was spearheading a proposed ordinance that
would adversely affect the operation of Internet cafes. Aguas, on the urging of the president of an Angeles City business group, then decided to run for
public office to oppose the anti-Internet ordinance.
He won a seat in the city council.
His entry into politics made him very busy, so he
decided to shut down the ink-refilling business and
sold his Internet shop as well. He opened a franchised
Ministop convenience store instead to keep himself
in business. Then, in the 2006 national elections, he
ran for vice mayor of Angeles City but lost. As he put
it afterwards, “I had nowhere else to go.”
CONTACT DETAILS
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f there’s anything
that Jericho Aguas
has learned from
his flirtation with
politics, it’s that nothing
beats focusing on your
business to make it
thrive.
Of his ink-refilling
business, Aguas recalls:
“I shelled out P200,000
to start that business
but I recovered not
a single cent from it
kasi hindi ko natutukan
[because I wasn’t able
to focus on it].”
Politics also took
away his focus on his
Internet café—which,
ironically, was the
reason he had entered
politics. “I was no
longer able to manage
the shop,” he says.
“The computers needed
repairs but I couldn’t
attend to their upkeep
anymore.”
When he did focus
on a business, Jericho
was able to turn around
his family’s floundering
pawnshop—even
establishing a Western
Union outlet right
beside the shop to
augment its business.
It took Aguas a month to bounce back from his
defeat. In July of 2007, he approached his father,
Ronald Aguas, and volunteered to manage the family’s floundering 15-year-old pawnshop, the Aguas
& Sons (Agsons) Pawnshop. Using his own money as working capital, he managed the pawnshop
hands-on and was able to turn the business around
after only a month.
This time, because of his much sharper focus,
Aguas is confident that he can become really, really big in businesses. n
AGUAS & SONS PAWNSHOP & DOLLAR EXCHANGE
Agsons Building, McArthur Highway corner T. Aguas Street Balibago, Angeles City
Telephone: (045) 625-7707 • Mobile: 0928-5053286; 0917-8114866
2008 ENTREPRENEUR 5
Maya BatacLagdameo
MKJ Service Link
This business found a way not
only to beat but to eliminate
the competition altogether
By Icy Luzano
O
Photos by Walter Villa
ne can put up a good business with
things that are just lying around
uselessly, but it requires lots of guts
and creativity. This is precisely how
MKJ Service Link Inc. got started
in the cushion and bed-and-bath linen business 21
years ago.
Its founder, Manel K. Jose, used to be in the business
of selling embroidery machines in the 1980s. It did quite
well until late in the decade, during which the business
faltered and Jose was unable to dispose of four of the
machines. She then thought of turning what was left
of her failed business into a bigger venture.
With the four unsold embroidery machines and
P50,000 in initial investment, Jose put up an embroidery business in Pasig City in 1987 and named it MKJ
Service Link. She started operations with just four employees, who did the embroidery on table linens using
various fabrics.
MKJ initially catered to the local market, distributing its embroidered products to major department
stores in Metro Manila. In 1990, it began exporting
its products and expanded its product line to include
cushions, bed-and-bath linens, and various promotional items made of linen.
Four years later, however, the products of MKJ encountered stiff competition from linen being made by
Chinese manufacturers. The company started to lose its
6 ENTREPRENEUR 2008
taken out of the picture.
With the assistance of Philippine government agencies, MKJ
then invested in training workers
and in buying new equipment such
as weaving looms. Local farmers
in Bohol, Aklan, Batangas, Cebu,
Marinduque, and the Bicol provinces harvested the natural fibers
the company needed. MKJ therefore had to establish a network of workers in those places to take charge of sorting, weaving, and various other processes. The company workstation in Pasig City
then would take care of the sewing, embroidery, finishing, and quality control.
In 2007, Jose resigned as president of MKJ and
tapped a relative to take over. Maya Batac-Lagdameo,
whose husband is Jose’s brother-in-law, assumed the post
and tapped her twin, Laya Bengzon, to be the vice president for operations and marketing.
Lagdameo, taking note of the public’s growing appreciation for things green and natural, sees even better prospects for MKJ’s products: “Our products have
the edge in terms of novelty because they are all-natural
and all hand-made. This is therefore a perfect time for
our business because most everyone wants to go green
to help protect the environment.”
Belen Araracap, MKJ’s marketing director who has
been with the group since 1987, says that the ability
to change is crucial
to this kind of business. “You should always be able to offer
something new so
your presence will
continue to be felt,”
she explains.
Currently, MKJ is
exporting its all-natural embroidered linen products to the United States,
Europe, Japan, Dubai, and New Zealand and also distributes them to local malls, restaurants, hotels, airlines,
and specialty shops. ■
MAYA BATACLAGDAMEO:
‘This is a
perfect
time for our
business
because most
everyone
wants to go
green.’
foreign customers to the Chinese, who were not only
capable of mass producing the goods but also could offer the same product lines more cheaply.
Fortunately for MKJ, it found a way not only to beat
the competition but to eliminate it altogether. This was
after a foreign consultant advised the company to drop
synthetic fabrics and use all-natural fibers like abaca
and raffia instead. Since these can only be found in the
Philippines, the foreign competition to the venture was
CONTACT DETAILS
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W
ith two decades
in the linen
business, MKJ
Service Link has learned to
take problems in stride and
to focus on creating ways to
keep the market’s appetite
for its products on a high
level. Says Laya Bengzon:
“The linen business is just
like the fashion business.
You have to come up with
new and innovative designs
every time.”
Laya says that with
the company having
already established
business contacts both
locally and abroad, the
only thing that can slow
down the business today
is bad weather, which
could possibly reduce the
harvest of fiber. To deal
with this eventuality, MJK
concentrates its production
during the last quarter
of every year up to the
following summer. If there
are bulk orders during
the rainy months, MKJ
simply advises clients that
production for those orders
might take longer to fill.
MKJ SERVICE LINK INC.
No. 1 Sta. Teresita St., Kapitolyo, Pasig City
Telephone: (02) 638-5067 • E-mail: [email protected]
2008 ENTREPRENEUR 7
Johnny! TV talk show,” she says,
laughing. “I think it got people’s
attention since I really dressed up
for that show and was very talkative—very unlike the prim-andproper doctors that usually get
featured in such shows.”
BMG gained even more popularity when the movie star
Rosanna Roces became one of
Dr. Belo’s most high-profile patients. After having undergone
breast and butt augmentation as well as liposuction,
this popular cosmetics endorser flaunted her enhanced physique in a number of TV shows and other
media. This catapulted BMG into the public eye.
There came a point,
however, where Dr. Belo
had to be selective with her
target clientele, as most celebrities preferred the more
Vicki Belo
The Belo
Medical
Group has
provided the
impetus for the
transformation
of dermatology
services in the
country into
the booming
industry it is
today.
Belo Medical Group
‘If everyone were beautiful,
then appearances would be
less of a factor’
By Katrina Tan
W
Photos by Ocs Alvarez
hen it comes to beauty, nobody
knows the business quite like
Dr. Vicki Belo. She has almost
single-handedly elevated the
old pop-and-prick dermatology
treatment to the giant enhancement industry that it
is today. “I had bad skin at a young age so I’d go to a
clinic for treatment every week,” she recalls. “But since
most patients back then were older women, I would
get exactly the same treatment that didn’t really work
for me. This is why I started dreaming of owning my
own clinic—one with up-to-date treatments, scheduled appointments, the works.”
Belo took up psychology at the University of the
Philippines and graduated in 1978, then earned her
degree in medicine and surgery from the University of
Santo Tomas in 1985. She pursued advanced studies at
the Institute of Dermatology in Thailand from 1989
to 1990, during which she developed a strong interest
in cosmetic treatments using laser, which is known to
be one of the most precise, safe, and wide-ranging solutions to skin problems.
“I found that unlike treatments for pimples or other skin diseases that always recur, cosmetic laser treatments yield permanent results that I could actually
see,” she says. “So following what I read from an Al
Ries marketing book [Positioning]—that you should be
the first in anything you do—I decided to introduce
the first skin laser treatments into the country.”
Dr. Belo returned to the Philippines in 1990, after
which her parents helped her set up the Belo Medical Group (BMG), the first clinic in the country spe-
8 ENTREPRENEUR 2008
cializing in cosmetic dermatology and surgery. The
company started out quite small, with a staff of five
in 44 sq m of space at the Medical Towers building
in Makati City.
BMG just strongly focused on delivering top-notch
service and treatments to its clients as comfortably as
possible. In fact, the clinic came to be known for the
following trademark amenities: the latest upscale magazines in the waiting room, complimentary chocolates,
and baked goodies that Dr. Belo makes herself.
“One thing that really helped market our clinic was
when we were featured in Johnny Litton’s Oh No, It’s
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A
s is the case
with the Belo
clinics, many
businesses start with
a felt need—even the
entrepreneur’s own.
“My clinic is a bit
of a selfish thing for
me,” Dr. Vicki Belo says
with a laugh. “I had
bad skin, so I became a
dermatologist. I had a
weight problem growing
up, so I got into in
liposuction. Now that
I’m older,
I’ve gotten
even more
interested in
procedures
for more
mature
women.”
Recently, Dr. Belo
also launched her own
skin care line, simply
calling it Belo. She and
her daughter Cristalle
develop products for
the line together.
“As in the case of all
the other treatments,
I was the guinea pig,”
Dr. Belo says. “Since
my skin is so sensitive,
I would know at once
when a product is bad.
Still, it took us about
two years to develop
products that would be
affordable, effective,
and really pang-masang
Pilipino [with Filipino
mass appeal].”
intimate and private clinic. Conversely,
other patients often were intimidated and
had the impression that the services offered by BMG had to be expensive.
She explains: “I ultimately made the
decision to cater to the public because
after all, my reason for putting up the
clinic in the first place was to help the
most number of people. Of course, I’m not saying that
everyone should get plastic surgery. All I am offering is
a choice. I just want the world to be more fair to people. You see, if everyone is beautiful, then appearances would be less of a factor.”
Currently, BMG employs over 120 people in its seven clinics—two in Quezon City (Tomas Morato Ave.
and at the TriNoma mall), two in Makati (Makati Medical Plaza and Rustan’s Makati) and one each in Alabang (Westgate Center), San Juan (Connecticut St.,
East Greenhills), and Pasig City (The Podium). n
CONTACT DETAILS
BELO MEDICAL GROUP
Tomas Morato Branch • 305 Tomas Morato Ave. cor.
Sct. Madriñan St. South Triangle, Quezon City • Telephones: (02) 373-33 55, (02) 373-3188
Fax: (02) 373-40 88 • Mobile: 0917-8320576 • Website: www.belomed.com
2008 ENTREPRENEUR 9
Gina Butler, Mozzy Ravena
and Miren Padilla
Pink Salon
These three women created an
entirely new business, for an
international brand.
Photo by Walter Villa
M
ost business-minded people bring in
a famous international brand to the
country to sell it, but these three enterprising women did something else:
they created an offshoot of one such
brand and started an entirely new business out of it.
In December 2007, Gina Butler, Mozzy Ravena,
and Miren Padilla launched Pink Salon by Barbie,
the world’s first Barbie-licensed salon. They did so
to take advantage of the strong market franchise of
a doll created by Mattel in 1969—a product that
had become a very popular gift item for little girls
Aside from pampering
services, the Pink Salon
provides mothers and
daughters a venue for
bonding.
10 ENTREPRENEUR 2008
all over the world.
Pink Salon, located at the Fun Ranch Mall at the
Frontera Verde complex in Pasig City, is owned and operated by Toy Barn Inc., which has six partners including Butler, Ravena, and Padilla. Besides Pink Salon, Toy
Barn also owns a namesake toy store company that’s also
located at Fun Ranch—which, of course, explains why
the Pink Salon occupies a space within Toy Barn.
The Pink Salon offers for “young misses” three years
old and above several pampering services, all with Barbie- and Ken-inspired names (Ken is the name of Barbie’s male partner doll). The haircuts are called Barbie
Cut, Bang Trim, and Ken’s Cool Cut; and the stylings,
Princess Blow Style, Diva Style, Glamour Curls, and
Ken’s Funky Hairstyle. The styling packages offered
are called Princess for the Day, Glamour Gal, and Diva
for the Day.
Pink Salon also offers services for mothers to provide them with the opportunity to bond with their
young daughters.
Butler and Ravena say that the idea for Pink Salon
was a result of a felt need for an activity area for little
girls at Fun Ranch. While there were activity areas for
boys and for kids in general—space ball, jungle gym
(Active Fun), a zoo (Avilon), a kiddie spa, and restaurants—there was none dedicated to small girls. So the
three partners came up with the idea of setting up a salon for them—a very apt extension of the toy brand
Barbie that their store was already carrying.
“We thought, ‘Let’s just try it out’,” says Ravena,
wife of former San Miguel Beer basketball player Bong
Ravena. “It’s something that we had connections with
anyway.”
It took just a little over a year for Pink Salon to get
off the ground because Mattel didn’t think twice about
the proposed Barbie salon. “They were so positive about
it,” says Ravena, now the salon’s managing partner.
Toy Barn Inc. was given the license by Mattel to be
the franchisee of Pink Salon in the Philippines. “We
were trying to get the license for all of Asia, but they
didn’t give it to us,” says Ravena.
The business partners wanted to get a name salon to
provide them the salon services. They therefore talked
CONTACT DETAILS
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D
ealing with a major
US-based licensor
such as Mattel
isn’t easy and requires
patience, says Mozzy
Ravena of Pink Salon by
Barbie. “For one,” she
explains, “it was a first for
us. And this project was
not in the US. We are in
faraway Philippines. So
Mattel went into every
detail, and we had to send
them pictures—the colors,
the tiles, the chairs, the
products we were going
to use, the staff uniforms,
everything.”
The salon uses Barbie
products from the Barbie
cosmetics and personal
care line. For products not
in the Barbie line, Pink
Salon uses well-known
products like L’Oreal. “And
Mattel is so particular
about sanitation and safety
that everything used in
the salon has to have their
approval,” says Ravena.
Mattel also had to
approve the salon’s
physical look. Ravena says
they had to present to
them their logo 20 times
before it was approved.
She says Mattel also had
the colors of their shop’s
interior changed from
black and white to pastel
colors so they could match
those of the company’s
2008 colors that were
then coming out.
to a local company, but its owner was not enthusiastic
about the project, finding a lot of reasons for the idea
not to work. Ultimately, they were able to arrange consultancy and training of the Pink Salon staff with Toni
& Guy Manila of Essensuals, the pioneer franchisee of
the UK-based Toni & Guy chain in the Philippines.
Since Essensuals was a very well known brand in hairdressing, Mattel quickly agreed to the choice.
Butler and Ravena say that the licenses from Mattel
and Essensuals cost them seven figures in peso terms.
Still, they think the investment is worth it because the
response from their potential clients—daughters and
mothers—has been encouraging.
The business has since grown to three more outlets—
one each at Westgate Alabang, at SM Mall of Asia in
Pasay City, and at Trinoma mall in Quezon City. Butler, who together with her husband Tony are part owners of Fun Ranch, is confident that financial returns on
Pink Salon will come in good time. “We have the long
term in mind,” she says. n
PINK SALON BY BARBIE
Upper Ground Level, Fun Ranch Mall, Frontera Verde, Ortigas Avenue corner C-5, Pasig City
Telephone: (02) 636-1320
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Ryan
Cayabyab
W
ith the The
Music Studio’s
new location,
Ryan Cayabyab intends
to be even more handson in the business and
stay more often in the
studio. “I’ve learned a
lot from running the
studio and from my
experience in the music
industry,” he says. “For
example, I now see how
important publicity and
marketing are to this
business.”
The Music Studio
‘People saw what we could do to
our students and they wanted us
to do it for them as well’
By Katrina Tan
B
Photos by At Maculangan
y 1986, Ryan Cayabyab had already
achieved wide national recognition for
his musical compositions that ranged from
award-winning film scores and theatrical
performances to popular commercial jingles and liturgical symphonies. As the next logical step
in his career, he then decided to use his knowledge and
skills to teach people how to make good music.
“I thought of putting up a music studio where people could take lessons in the performing arts,” Cayabyab recalls. “After all, my wife Emmy and I were both
music graduates of the University of the Philippines,
so we were confident that we could run the music studio that we had in mind.”
From teaching music at UP and from the fees he
had earned from his musical compositions, Cayabyab
had by then already saved enough money for starting
capital. However, following his father-in-law’s advice,
Cayabyab put up only P120,000 of his savings and took
an P80,000-bank loan for the music studio.
The Cayabyabs set up the studio at Makati Cinema Square in Makati (now a city) and simply named
it The Music Studio. It was a 120 sq m room with seven practice cubicles that could accommodate a total
of 30 students. The initial studio equipment consisted
of seven pianos—four brand-new and the rest used—
and several cassette players.
Cayabyab hired a staff of three to handle administra-
The Music
School is
envisioned
to become
the country’s
‘most soughta�er music
school.’
tion and recruited seven specially selected music teachers
for the studio faculty. His teaching team consisted mostly
of teachers he had met when he was teaching at UP.
The Music Studio initially offered voice and piano lessons for children and for adults. Instead of a
year-long course, however, its full course consisted of
10 sessions of 30 minutes each held once or twice a
week, depending on the availability of the student
and the teacher. The couple designed the courses
that way so students could easily shift to other courses if they wanted to.
To the couple’s disappointment, however, The Music Studio didn’t get a single enrollee when it opened
its doors in October 1986. Recalls Cayabyab: “We did
the usual advertising—handing out fliers and telling
all of our friends about the studio—but for almost a
month, there was nothing.” In the weeks that followed, only a few students enrolled.
The turning point for the studio came when two
singing ensembles that it had trained, the 14K and
Smokey Mountain, became hugely popular among the
Filipino public. Composed of Cayabyab’s students 14
years old and below, the 14K was to launch the successful singing careers of such TV and stage personalities as Jolina Magdangal and Ten-Ten Muñoz. Smokey
Mountain became well-known for songs that focused
on social, environmental, and patriotic themes.
CONTACT DETAILS
Cayabyab is very
clear about what he
hopes to accomplish:
“My vision is to elevate
it to the most soughtafter music school
in the country, and I
aim to produce happy,
confident musical
performers. You see,
one of the Philippines’
greatest natural
resources is its talented
performers. I believe we
should work to develop
that.”
“A lot of kids who saw those two groups perform
wanted to be like them,” says Cayabyab. “So without
really intending to, the studio got a lot of publicity
from them. People saw what we could do to our students and they wanted us to do it for them as well.”
Business began to pick up at The Music Studio after that, with enrollments peaking to as many as 700
students during summer breaks. But by 2003, during
its 17th year, the school began experiencing enrolment slumps. Cayabyab attributes them to the fact
that the building on which the studio stood had become rundown and with scarcer and scarcer parking
spaces around it. This was why Cayabyab decided to
close it down in early 2005 and relocated it to its present site at Robinsons Galleria along Ortigas Avenue
in Quezon City in December 2006.
Says Cayabyab about the new studio: “At 229 sq m,
it’s almost two times bigger than our old one, so we are
able to offer more artistic and exciting programs and
accommodate more students. In fact, we have already
added violin, guitar, and drum lessons; music theory; Musikgarten for children from age three to seven;
dance classes; and body-mind classes.” n
RYAN CAYABYAB THE MUSIC STUDIO
Park Avenue, Robinsons Galleria, Ortigas Avenue cor. Edsa, Quezon City
Telephones: (02) 637-9840, (02) 914-5055, • Mobile: 0917-9096484
Website: www.ryancayabyabthemusicstudio.com
Melissa
Floirendo
and partners
Regatta
‘Our goal was to update the
look and image of the brand’
By Katrina Tan
O
ne of the few select homegrown labels that have withstood the changing tides of Filipino fashion is Regatta, a clothing line that began in
1989 as a pet project of two leading
Manila socialites, Mia Borromeo and Lizzie Zobel. Its
wide selection of high-end casual resort wear for men,
women, and children was launched when the first Regatta store opened at Greenbelt 1 in Makati (now a
city) that same year, quickly becoming one of the most
popular clothing brands in its class.
The brand’s market performance made a strong
impression on five Filipina students who had met in
Boston, Massachusetts, while studying there for their
Master’s degrees. They became good friends and when
they individually moved back to the Philippines between 2000 and 2003, they decided to look for a good
investment together.
“The owners of Regatta offered to sell us the company,” recalls Melissa Floirendo, now Regatta’s managing director. “We saw its strong branding and potential for growth, so we decided to take the opportunity
and bought the company in 2003.”
Floirendo has since been taking care of the business, while her four friends, who had chosen to be silent partners, sit in the company board.
After formally purchasing the company, the group
hired designers Maja Olivares-Co and Hannah Olivares-Navato of Sonia Santiago-Olivares & Associates to renovate Regatta’s flagship Glorietta branch,
then commissioned another young
Regatta’s
designer, Tippi Ocampo, to create
main claim
their colorful summer collection.
to fame is
“Our goal was to update the look
its emphasis
and
image of the brand as well as
on versatile
increase
awareness and sales,” says
designs
and quality
Floirendo. “We invested in PR and
fabrics.
in a launch event, hired key people,
updated Regatta’s
business processes,
and automated key
areas.”
The reinvigorated brand was
welcomed by the
public. “The reception of loyal and
new customers was
extremely positive,
particularly during summer and
Christmas, which
are our peak seasons,” she says.
Floirendo says
that Regatta’s main claim to fame is its emphasis on
versatile designs and quality fabrics. “We’ve kept up
Regatta’s tradition of casual style, keeping the clothes
versatile enough for working at the office, shopping,
partying, or lounging,” she says. “We use natural fabrics as much as possible and make it a point to infuse
stylish details into must-have essentials. Our bestsellers are the honeycomb shirt for men and women, the
striped tops with ruffles, the crust white shirts, the rayon dresses, and the logo tees.”
CONTACT DETAILS
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R
egatta’s basic
way of doing
business is still
pretty much the same
as it was from the start.
The company remains
focused on its original
target market—males and
females from ages 20
to 40 in the A, B, and C
classes, and children.
“When we bought
the company in 2003, we
were very lucky to have
inherited a good group of
people, both in the head
office and in the stores,”
says Melissa Floirendo.
“We have about 20
employees, which is pretty
much the same as when
we first started. This made
the transition from the
previous owners to our
group very smooth, and
although we systematized
several of the business
processes, we also learned
a lot from them.”
Floirendo says that
the Regatta team makes
it a point to always listen
to their customers and
to go the extra mile to
make them happy. “We
take pride in our good
customer service, and
our customers always
remind us to keep up
the good service and
our versatile product
offerings,” she says.
The brand uses fabrics that are either sourced from local suppliers or ordered from abroad. Floirendo and her
team then develop the designs and have the clothes manufactured locally. This streamlined process guarantees that
new shipments arrive at the store every week.
The new owners of Regatta have since moved their
original store from Greenbelt 1 to Greenbelt 3 and,
because of the increasing demand for Regatta’s apparel and accessories, they have already begun expanding the business through franchising.
Their five-year franchise fee for a Regatta store
is P500,000, renewable for five years. The total initial investment will range from P2 million to P3 million pesos, with a projected payback period of two to
three years.
In May of 2007, Regatta opened its first franchise
store at Ayala’s TriNoma Mall at North EDSA in Quezon City, then followed by the second in June at the
Ayala Center in Cebu City. n
REGATTA
1F Glorietta 3, Ayala Center, Makati City, Metro Manila • Telephone: (02) 894-3769
E-mail: [email protected]
Josie Go
Karimadon
‘We pride ourselves in
being trendsetters’
By Jaclyn Lutanco-Chua
W
ithout coming up with a business plan or even a marketing study, Josie Go put up her
first store in 1980. She merely followed the suggestion of
her mother, who said she might as well make something useful out of her passion for clothes and shopping. Go figured there was no harm in trying. “Rent
was cheap, and I wasn’t busy with anything else anyway,” she recalls.
So, Go opened the first Karimadon shop on 40
sq m of space at the Virra Mall in Greenhills, San
Juan. However, she initially did not sell clothes as
her mother advised; she sold PX goods like candy and snacks instead. It was much later that she
decided to sell ladies’ blouses, first sourcing them
from a local supplier, then eventually importing
them. “If you buy from local suppliers, your selections are limited,” she explains. “But if you source
from abroad, you will have many styles and designs
to choose from.”
It was while running the first Karimadon shop that
Go finally found her calling—to be a seller of unique,
exclusive, and original clothing at affordable prices. In
time, she became one of the first garment retailers in
the country to buy, make, and sell her own clothes, a
move that was to make Karimadon one of the longeststaying apparel brands in the Philippine market.
“We pride ourselves in being trendsetters,” she
says. “If there’s a current style that’s ‘in’, chances are
we had already been selling that style since as early
as the year before.”
Go is proud that the typical Karimadon customer
is a long-time customer, one who first enters the store
when she is 18, looking for prom dresses. Between that
time and until she is 40, she will keep coming back for
her various casual and formal wear needs.
Today, Karimadon has a total of 16 branches in
the major Metro Manila malls. Each of them enjoys
brisk sales, whether located at high-end Glorietta or
in a mass-based SM outlet. Three of the branches are
owned by franchisees, but Go emphasizes that she had
not aggressively sought them out. “They were the ones
who came to me and were so persistent to get the franchise,” she says.
Karimadon has been successful because it plays
to its strengths, and has not overextended itself.
Karimadon has been run as a family business ever
since it was established, with Go and her daughter
personally designing the clothes and buying the materials for making them. “We go on buying trips once
every quarter, and we come out with new designs two
or three times a month,” she says.
Go says that Karimadon has been successful in
the business because it plays on its strengths—women’s apparel exclusively—and has not overextended
itself by tapping other markets such as men’s or children’s wear. “We are putting all of our efforts on our
core product line to make sure we stay competitive,”
CONTACT DETAILS
n
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‘T
he secret of
Karimadon’s
longevity
is twofold,” says its
owner, Josie Go. “The
first is the quality and
style of our clothes.
Our customers know
that anytime they come
to Karimadon, they
will find something
affordable that will
flatter their body, no
matter the shape.”
Indeed, Go is so
meticulous about how
her line of clothing
will fit the customer
that she has actually
retained specific
people to represent the
different body sizes—
small, medium, large,
and extra-large. All new
designs of Karimadon
must fit these people
perfectly before they
can be approved for
delivery to the stores.
“Secondly,” she
says, “since we have
been in business for
a long time now, the
Karimadon name has
developed its own
cachet among buyers,
something that makes
them truly proud to
wear something from
Karimadon.”
A quick look at
the end credits of
primetime soap operas
on local channels will
prove her point: many
of the female stars
in these shows are
actually dressed up by
Karimadon.
KARIMADON
G/F SM Megamall A , Mandaluyong City
n
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Mildred
Gococo
A
firm believer
in the handson approach
to business, Mildred
Gococo makes it a point
to visit her Boy Busog
outlets regularly. “You
must make sure that
the business follows a
system,” she says. “Being
hands-on also means
knowing your employees
by heart. They are your
most valuable assets,
and it’s important to
get feedback from them
because they are the
Boy Busog
‘Once you start something, you
have to finish it’
By Icy Luzano
W
Photos by Jervy Santiago
hen Mildred Gococo took her
involuntary retirement in 2006
as regional manager of the multinational Avery Dennison, she
took it as an opportunity to become her own boss. She decided to put up a business
of her own: a snack food chain specializing in shawarma, the Middle Eastern sandwich-style meat dish that
has become popular in the Philippines.
Gococo enlisted her children’s help in setting up
the business. Her son Wilbert did the research and
the rest of her children came up with the name for
the business: Boy Busog, a name that immediately
brings to mind satisfying and filling snacks. Gococo put up P700,000 from her retirement pay as initial capital, using the funds to pay for the equipment, rentals, initial food inventory, and operating
expenses. Then, in July 2006, she opened her first
Boy Busog shawarma outlet at the Bonifacio Plaza
in Divisoria, Manila, in front of the Tutuban Shopping Center.
“Getting into this business was a real challenge,”
she says. “But I told myself that if in my former company I could handle all of three countries at the same
time—namely Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines—I shouldn’t have any difficulty at all running
this one.”
But things didn’t run smoothly at first. During the
first few months of the business, sales were so lean that
Even if business
could entail
enormous
risks, MIDRED
GOCOCO says
that the returns
from it are far
greater than
those from
being employed.
she was forced to look for ways not to lay off her employees, like letting them work part-time with friends
who were also in the food business.
It was only after three months that the business
started to pick up. Sales grew to a point that Gococo was able to open a second outlet in Tutuban that
same year, one measuring 6 sq m. It was slightly bigger than the first one, which had an area of only 4 sq
m, so she decided to do most of the food preparation
and cooking there for both of the outlets.
With both outlets doing well, Boy Busog quickly developed a sizable base of loyal customers. This
performance was further boosted by robust sales during the 2006 Christmas season, enabling the business to already break even after operating for less
than a year.
The Boy Busog outlets offer shawarma sandwiches
and shawarma rice toppings. They are the only ones
offering the food item among all the to-go snack food
chains at the Bonifacio Plaza in Tutuban. “You have
to understand the market to do well in this business,”
CONTACT DETAILS
ones in the frontlines.”
The hands-on
approach has also
allowed Gococo to cut
down on her costs—she
marinades and prepares
the shawarma and its
garlic sauce by herself,
using proprietary recipes.
To develop the recipes,
she came up with three
shawarma samples first
and asked different sets
of people to taste-test
them. From the feedback
she got, she created her
distinct shawarma recipe.
Gococo says. “Ang market dito kailangan iba at nakakabusog. [The market here wants filling meals that’s
different].”
Today, Gococo now also supplies shawarma to a
food stall in Greenhills, San Juan City, and to a canteen at the St. Stephen School in Manila. She currently has a staff of ten helping her run the business.
There has been no looking back for Gococo ever
since. Just when she was just starting up Boy Busog, in
fact, she received an offer to work again in the corporate world but she promptly turned it down. She says
that her decision was in keeping with what her father, a Chinese businessman, had taught her: “Once
you start something, you have to finish it. You don’t
just leave it hanging.”
Gococo acknowledges that running your own business entails enormous risks, but she says that the returns from it are far greater than what you would get
from being employed. And in her case, she says, a big
plus is the satisfaction of being able to take control
and call the shots and being able to spend more time
with her family. n
BOY BUSOG QUICK MEALS CORP.
Bonifacio Plaza, Manila
Mobile: 0922-8913133 • E-mail: [email protected]
Joby
Linsangan
Orange Blush salon
‘A no-borrowing philosophy
became my mantra
in growing Orange Blush’
By Mishell M. Malabaguio
I
n June 2003, when she picked up the month’s
issue of ENTREPRENEUR Magazine, little did former medical technologist Joby A. Linsangan
know that her career would take such a sharp
turn. Upon reading the
JOBY
magazine, she realized that what
LINSANGAN’s
she had wanted all along was to
first
become an entrepreneur. With entrepreneurial
that self-discovery, she began to
venture—
read self-help books and magazines
Orange
about starting a business.
Blush—came
Barely four months later, an op- knocking at her
door.
portunity for her to get into business knocked at her
door: a friend of hers
asked her if she would
be interested in buying
a salon along del Pilar St. in Cabanatuan
City that someone was
about to close down.
Linsangan enjoys being pampered in a salon, so she didn’t think
twice about the opportunity. She decided to
buy the salon and to
run it as her first entre20 ENTREPRENEUR 2008
preneurial venture.
Using her savings from her employment as a medical technologist and school instructor, Linsangan
bought the salon for P15,000. She spent another
P15,000 to have it renovated, using the color orange—
her favorite color—to give it a chic and youthful image. And as a final touch, she gave the salon a new
name: Orange Blush.
Linsangan retained the salon’s employees but since
she did not know how to run the salon herself, she entrusted its day-to-day management to her friend and to
its previous owner. In the meantime, she took up training courses in salon management and attended seminars on the latest salon industry trends. As a hedge in
the event that Orange Blush did not do well, however,
she held on to her two sources of income as a medical
technologist.
But just when Linsangan thought that
the business was well
on its way to becoming a great success, all
of the Orange Blush
hairstylists quit,
having been pirated by another salon.
She took this totally unexpected setback in stride, however, quickly hiring
new stylists who were
younger than the previous ones and more
willing to be trained
and supervised.
Linsangan recalls
that restaffing the salon was actually the
very first time that she
felt she was in control
of the business. The
experience also convinced her that success in the salon business depended not so
much on the stylists
but on management
strategy.
In mid-2004, she
opened a branch of
Orange Blush on
Mabini St. in Cabanatuan and quit her employment as a medical technologist to become a full-time entrepreneur. “I used
CONTACT DETAILS
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T
he salon
or beauty
business is
probably one of the
toughest fields to break
into. This is because
it relies so much on
its clientele’s personal
satisfaction and on
excellent word-ofmouth.
That’s where
aggressive promotion
kicks in. In the case of
Joby Linsangan, she
extensively promoted
Orange Blush on
radio and in the local
newspaper, gave out
flyers, worked out
tie-ups with schools,
and sponsored school
events, contests, and
concerts.
These efforts paid
off, initially generating
for Orange Blush high
foot-traffic of as many
as 30 to 40 clients a
day. It also enabled her
to recover her initial
investment in the
business after only six
months of operation.
the profits from the first salon to put up the branch,“
she says. “In fact, I never loaned or borrowed capital
either for all of the other branches that I opened after
that. This no-borrowing philosophy became my mantra in growing Orange Blush.”
Orange Blush was able to hold its own against the
giant salons and the smaller community salons in the
locality by catering to an overlooked niche market—
young people and students who have their baon (allowance) to spend for grooming. “I decided to go after the middle-income group, not too masa but not
too classy or formal either,” Linsangan says. “My goal
was to make Orange Blush a community salon that’s
decent and inviting to the young crowd.”
By pursuing this strategy, all of the Orange Blush
salons are doing well, with each branch averaging 100
clients a day, 60 percent of whom are regular clients.
Today, Orange Blush has five salons in Cabanatuan
City and a sixth at Sta. Rosa, each with a distinct target
market. Its salons near university and school campuses cater to the students, while the one at the NE Pacific Mall
along the national highway caters to mall goers. n
ORANGE BLUSH SALON
Sotto Bldg., del Pilar St., Cabanatuan City
Catherine
Lopez-Uy
A Different Bookstore
‘We intend to continue selling
only good literature in our store,
even if we have to give up on
some of our profits’
Y
ou can tell after spending just five minutes inside one of its branches that
A Different Bookstore—as the name
says—is truly different from other bookstores. It’s smaller than the usual bookstore with its average floor size of 70 sq m, but it has
that ambience every booklover dreams of: cozy, intimate, and personalized.
What makes the shop even more distinctive is that
it carries mostly unfamiliar titles one won’t find in
other bookstores. Upon closer scrutiny, many of them
turn out to be award-winning and thought-provoking
books. But the biggest surprise of all is that in no other bookstore can you find staff that are so knowledgeable about the books they are selling.
Now on its 14th year, A Different Bookstore
has grown at a controlled, leisurely pace to just four
branches within Metro Manila.
“We’ve lasted this long because we have deliberately chosen not to compete with the bigger bookstores,” says its owner, Catherine Lopez-Uy. “In
terms of size, we don’t aim to be a Barnes & Noble [the largest book retailer in the United States].
We prefer to stay independent and intimate—that’s
our niche.”
The shop is the brainchild of Lopez-Uy’s mother
Cristina, an avid bibliophile who would fill her luggage
“It was difficult for my Mom
in the beginning because in 1994,
the Internet was still in its infancy and wasn’t commercially available yet,” Lopez-Uy recalls. “It was
therefore such a tough job to send
orders to the publishers abroad,
not to mention doing research on
the titles.”
A book-lover herself, Lopez-Uy remembers that she and
her siblings grew up surrounded by tomes. “Since we weren’t
allowed to watch TV during school days, we always looked forward to reading books for relaxation,” she says.
In 2002, seeing that her mother was getting tired
from running the bookstore, Lopez-Uy quit her job
as finance manager at Benpres Holdings and took
over. During the next five years, she grew the business from two to seven branches, although she eventually had to close down two of them. Besides its Glorietta main store, A Different Bookstore now has a
branch each at Eastwood City in Libis, in Greenhills, and in Serendra at The Bonifacio Global City
in Taguig City.
As an operational change, Lopez-Uy made it
mandatory for all stores’ staff to submit book reports, requiring them to read two books a month—
one their choice, the other hers or her mother’s.
“We didn’t set strict guidelines on how they would
do their book reports,” Lopez-Uy explains. “They
could write in Filipino, and they could either relate the book to their personal lives or in relation
to current events.”
This approach, she says, worked like a charm both
for the staff and the shop. “And it still does,” she says.
“Making the staff themselves read the books we sell
really builds their self-confidence, and a lot of them
have actually made the books they had read the bestselling titles in the store.”
The impact of a book-savvy sales staff really shows
in their sales, Lopez-Uy says. For instance, the Seren-
A Di�erent
Bookstore has
stayed small
‘because
we have
deliberately
chosen not to
compete with
the bigger
bookstores,’
says
CATHERINE
LOPEZ-UY.
with books every time she came back to the Philippines
from trips abroad. Together with some business partners,
she put up the shop’s first branch in 1994 at Ayala’s Glorietta in Makati City. Her idea was to sell mostly titles
that were not readily available in the country.
CONTACT DETAILS
n
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A
ltogether, the
recommendations
five outlets
or on The New York
of A Different
Times bestseller lists in
Bookstore carry over
choosing titles it would
15,000 titles across
carry. The Lopezes
all genres. Compared
themselves make the
to other retailers that
choices based on their
have orders delivered
personal tastes and
by ship, the company’s
evaluation.
For instance,
books arrive by
airfreight from the
since both mother
United States and the
and daughter were
United Kingdom.
staunchly against the
“Our delivery
US-led invasion of Iraq,
arrangement is more
they have refused to
expensive, but the
carry books about or
advantage is that we get
written by supporters
the books way ahead
of the war. On the other
of the others,” says
hand, as advocates
Catherine Lopez-Uy.
of environmental
One other mark of
protection, they make
its independence is
it a point for the store
that the shop doesn’t
to carry lots of titles on
rely on publishers’
the subject.
dra branch has a hit rate of 80 percent—four out of
every five customers who enter the store end up purchasing a book.
The shop’s highly personalized book selection approach does upset some customers. Those who discover that books by their favorite authors are not available simply take their business elsewhere.
But Lopez-Uy is not fazed by such losses. “My
mom began this bookstore with the mission of providing good literature to as many people as we can,”
she says. “For this reason, we intend to continue selling only good literature in our store, even if we have
to give up on some of our profits.” n
ASIAN BOOKS INC.
G/F Glorrietta 3, Ayala Center, Ayala Avenue, Makati City
Telephone: (02) 813-8722; (02) 758-2243 • Fax: (02) 813-8722
Shaina
Magdayao
Ystilo Salon
‘We are all girls in the family,
so we obviously all go to the salon’
By Marie Anne Fajardo
S
haina Magdayao entered show business as a child star but like her elder sister and fellow film-and-stage performer
Vina Morales, she has been an astute
investor as well, investing her earnings in businesses of her own. Among these businesses are a franchised outlet of the family-owned Ystilo
Salon at Berkeley Square in Tandang Sora in Quezon City and a 20-door residential apartment, also
in Quezon City.
When she was just 6, Magdayao played the title
role in the hit TV show Lyra, then went on in 1999
to star in another hit TV show, Marinella. This made
her a full-fledged child star with a very substantial
income, but she is one celebrity who had not simply rested on her success. Indeed, while juggling her
SHAINA
MAGDAYAO:
‘The salon
business is
one of the
most stable
businesses
around.’
movie and TV schedules and finishing senior high school through
the home-study program of Angelicum College, she has also kept
herself busy learning the ropes of
her businesses.
Whenever she is free, she
hangs around either at her Ystilo salon or at the Ystilo corporate office, finding time to attend to her businesses even as she wraps up her various movie commitments.
“I know that in the Ystilo salon, my savings are being put to good use,” Magdayao says. “We went into
the salon business knowing that it’s one the most stable businesses around. This is because going to a salon is an emotional outlet for many Filipinos. It helps
them combat stress.”
The Ystilo franchising operation began in August
1999 as a single Spanish-style salon in Fairview, Quezon City, put up by her sisters Vina Morales and Sheila Magdayao and a brother-in-law, Federico Moreno.
The first outlet in Fairview was
established by the partners with
P800,000 in starting capital. In
eight years, the salon grew to a
total of 32 outlets nationwide,
12 of them company-owned and
the rest run by franchisees.
Magdayao, who got for herself the Ystilo franchise at Tandang Sora in August 2004, says
that going into the salon business seemed so natural for her
and sisters. She explains: “We
are all girls in the family, so we
obviously all go to the salon.”
Federico Moreno says it
helps that Vina is both a partner and an endorser of the salon, and he thinks it has been a
wise move for Shaina to get into business early. “She
really knows how to invest her money,” he says. “And
like all of our franchisees, she had to go through the
same extensive training, from the financial aspect to
operations and marketing.”
Lately, Magdayao has been endorsing nail art, the
latest in the services being offered by Ystilo in all its
salons. “In other countries, people are more adventurous with their nails,” she says. “When we introduced
nail art in Ystilo, Filipinos were then also beginning
to be more experimental, and our regular clients were
the first to try the service.”
As to her apartment business, Magdayao recalls
that she was hesitant at first to invest about P2 million in it. What eventually made her change her mind
was that her sister Vina had been doing well with her
own 12-door apartment complex. Now Magdayao’s
own apartment business is providing her with a regular fixed income. “It was scary at first, but now, I’m
thinking of expanding, maybe by going into another
apartment business,” she says. n
CONTACT DETAILS
n
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H
ere’s how Shaina
Magdayao sums
up her business
philosophy: “I’m
excited to handle more
responsibilities and also
to be a good example to
young kids. There are
many child stars today
and I think they should
learn to put their money
to good use by either
saving it or investing it.”
“I know that my show
biz career won’t go on
forever,” Shaina says, “so
I have decided to study,
get myself oriented in
the business, maybe
take a business-related
course in college, and
still manage to balance
everything.”
She is, in fact,
learning not just to
handle her earnings
and to take care of
her investments. As a
regular of the ABS-CBN
TV show ASAP, she has
also been honing herself
to become an all-around
performer with the
help of her mother. “I’m
willing to learn, and
given the opportunity,
why not?” she says. “In
my sister Vina’s case,
she was a singer first
before she ventured into
acting; in my case, I was
into acting first, but now
I’m learning to also sing
and dance.”
YSTILO SALON
Corporate O�ce, Unit B, Gil Preciosa Bldg. 2, 75 Timog Avenue, Bgy. South Triangle, Quezon City
Telephones: (02) 927-7508 to 09; (02) 927-7532 • Website: www.ystilosalon.com
Ping Medina
PenPen
‘When you don’t have an acting
assignment, you don’t earn
anything at all’
By Rhea Claire Madarang
A
n actor in TV soap operas and independent films, Ping Medina no longer
just entertains film audiences these
days but now also performs an entirely different role offscreen: a reallife restaurateur.
Medina, who is in his 20s, recently partnered with
his mother, Victoria Chupungco-Medina, in running
PenPen, a restaurant that
serves home-cooked dishes
in the Tomas Morato Avenue area in Quezon City.
The restaurant was named
by the family after his father,
veteran actor Pen Medina.
The young Medina says
he is happy with acting but
wants a more stable source
of income. He played a supporting role in the independent film Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros (The
Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros) and frequently does
supporting roles for TV dramas on both ABS-CBN and GMA 7.
“Mabilis ang pera sa line of work ko, pero pag wala
kang work, wala ka nang ibang source of income [Money comes fast in my line of work, but when you don’t
have an acting assignment, you don’t earn anything
at all],” he explains.
When he thought of going into business, he remembered that his mother had put up a restaurant the year before on Tomas Morato; it was one that
catered mainly to the lunch crowd. He
then realized that he didn’t have to look far to find
a business, he decided to partner with his mother in
running that restaurant.
Medina took charge of PenPen’s redecoration,
menu expansion, and marketing. He furnished it with
new chairs and tables to better suit the restaurant’s
casual look and feel, and he bought a large industrial stove for its kitchen. Altogether, mother and son
shelled out about
P100,000 in the improvements.
The menu of
the refurbished
restaurant reflects
Medina’s taste in
food: “Mahilig ako
sa simple lang pero
m a s a r a p . ’ Yu n g
pag kinakain mo,
gumaganda talaga
ang pakiramdam mo.
Comfort
food
talaga [I’m fond
PING MEDINA:
of
simple
but
delicious food,
During his
first month in
food that makes you feel good
business, he
when you eat them—real comdid the work of
fort food].”
cook, waiter, and
For this reason, Medina
busboy in turns
added the tagline “Comfort
to find out exactly
Food Araw-Araw [Everyday]”
what it takes to
to the restaurant’s signage, and
do the job right.
proceeded to expand the menu
to include what he describes as Filipino home-style
cooking “with a twist.”
During his first month in the business, he did the
work of cook, waiter, and busboy in turns to find out
exactly what it takes to do the job right. By running
the business on a day-to-day basis, he says, he was
also able to identify which systems were effective and
which were not.
He then proceeded to promote the restaurant
through online postings on blogs and on Web forums, eventually getting PenPen Restaurant featured
in shows on QTV and Jack TV. Owing to that exposure, the restaurant experienced a very substantial increase in patronage after only a month.
Medina admits that at first, he found it difficult
to handle this sudden surge of customers. Service
slowed down and the restaurant ran out of stock.
He recalls: “Hindi kami prepared. Hindi namin inex-
CONTACT DETAILS
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ach month,
PenPen
Restaurant
sponsors one nonprofit
cause-oriented
organization with a
donation of 10 percent
of the restaurant’s
profits. Ping Medina
puts the organization’s
merchandise on display
in the restaurant to
generate both sales and
publicity for it. “The
bigger the profits, the
bigger our donations,”
he says.
Medina envisions
PenPen expanding into
five branches or more
so he can make even
bigger contributions to
nonprofit, cause-oriented
organizations.
pect na ganoon kadami ang magiging customers [We
weren’t prepared. We didn’t expect such a big volume of customers].”
That incident was a major learning experience for
him: when you advertise, he says, be prepared to keep
up with the demand. So he decided after that to add
one waiter-busboy to his team of two cooks, one cooking assistant, and two waiter-busboys.
Despite such hitches, Medina finds running his restaurant business fulfilling. He explains: “The self-fulfillment is different when your very own vision and
concept is liked by other people. Even if you have selfdoubts and others also have doubts about it, you just
go ahead in your belief that it will work—and it did
work in my case.” n
PENPEN: COMFORT FOOD ARAW-ARAW
105-C Scout Castor St. corner Tomas Morato Ave., South Triangle, Quezon City
Telephone: (02) 411-4157
Cesar
Montano
Bellissimo
Ristorante
gredients. Keeping the Filipino palate in mind, however, they made certain adjustments to give the food
a Pinoy twist.
“Almost everything on the menu I can cook myself,” Montano says, “and I have the knack for knowing when food lacks this or that ingredient. Alam ko
kung anong sobra at anong kulang.”
He says that except for its name, which he admits
initially sounded to him like that of a beauty salon,
Bellissimo is “almost entirely Cesar Montano.” He designed the interiors of the restaurant himself, making
sure that it exudes both the comforts of home and the
feel of an authentic Italian restaurant.
Bellissimo is managed by Montano’s eldest daughter Angela, and her husband, Christopher Canlas. But
as in a movie production, Montano says, it is important for a restaurant owner to be hands-on in running
the business. This is why in between his show business
commitments, he drops by the restaurant almost every
day and personally attends to the guests.
Montano credits the warm reception customers have
given Bellissimo to his being a popular show-business
‘A restaurant’s success
still boils down to whether the
food is good or bad’
By Icy Luzano
W
Photo by Jun Pinzon
hen he was still a child, Cesar Montano had envisioned
putting up a bakery of his own.
At that time, he would often
stay up till the wee hours of the
morning watching pan de sal being made by the bakers in a neighboring panaderia (bakery). The process
so fascinated him that he swore to have one like that
bakery some day.
Today, he has fulfilled that dream, but what he
has put up is something much bigger than that bakery: Bellissimo Ristorante, a P3-million restaurant on
Tomas Morato Avenue in Quezon City. The restaurant offers authentic Italian dishes—from pizza to pasta to the finest in wines. It serves food good for two
for prices that start at P200 up, and takes pride in using mostly imported ingredients, particularly the best
cheeses from Italy.
The inspiration for Bellissimo—an Italian word
that means “very beautiful”—came from Montano’s
restaurant-hopping during visits to Italy as well as from
his love for everything that comes naturally. Indeed,
it’s no accident that he opened the restaurant on the
7th day of the 7th month of 2007.
Montano and his chef, Sherwin de la Peña, put together the menu for Bellissimo. They did it the way it’s
done in Italy, making use of only the freshest of raw in28 ENTREPRENEUR 2008
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n display in
Bellissimo
Ristorante
is Cesar Montano’s
personal collection of
books about Italy as
well as his personal
selection of bread and
wine. On the ground
floor, black-and-white
still photographs of the
Italian Mafia taken from
The Godfather movie
series provide accent
to the brick walls and
the wooden chairs and
tables.
The second floor,
which Montano calls
an “artists’ haven,”
puts on exhibit his
paintings and those
of his friends. A table
at the corner of the
smoking area—he calls it
the “Tarantino Room”—
bears the signature
of Hollywood director
Quentin Tarantino, one
of the many celebritycustomers who have
dined at the restaurant.
Acoustic bands
perform regularly at
Bellissimo, and on some
occasions, Montano
himself takes time out to
jam with the musicians
and serenade the guests.
“The ambiance of this
restaurant isn’t stiff,” he
says. “It’s casual. You
don’t have to dress up to
come here.”
personality. It has made it much easier for him to whet
their curiosity and get them to try the restaurant. “The
real challenge, however, is getting them to come back,”
he says. “Ultimately, a restaurant’s success still boils
down to whether your food is good or bad.”
In any case, beginner’s luck seems to have been
working well for Montano. The restaurant has been
doing quite well. “But we’re still a young restaurant,”
he says. “That makes us more willing to experiment
and to discover new things. I don’t think of the money part right now. Instead, I am always thinking of
quality and how to improve it every time. Hindi ko
bibitawan ito [I won’t let go of this].”
Montano admits that being an entrepreneur is one
of the most challenging roles he has taken on by far.
And how has the experience been?
“Bellissimo!” he answers. n
The actor designed the interiors of the
restaurant himself, making sure it exudes the
feel of an authentic Italian restaurant.
CONTACT DETAILS
BELLISSIMO RISTORANTE
Units E & F, 105 Scout Castor St. corner Tomas Morato Ave., Quezon City
Telephones: (02) 376-5746; (02) 414-0247; (02) 411-8335
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Happy
Ongpauco
and Allana
Montelibano
T
The Boutique
This seven-room boutique
hotel has distinguished
itself for its highly
personalized services.
‘A series of traveling experiences
inspired us to put up
The Boutique’
By Francis Menor
W
hen close friends Happy Ongpauco and Allana Montelibano thought of putting up a bedand-breakfast hotel in Tagaytay
City in 2006, they clearly had
in mind the type of guests they wanted: people whose
needs were precisely the same as theirs.
Recalls Ongpauco: “Our thinking was, ‘Okay, if we
were the clients ourselves, how do we want to be treated?’ We then came up with our own individual ideas of
what makes a hotel a unique place to stay, then agreed
on those that should become features of our hotel.”
The pooling of their ideas resulted in The Boutique,
a seven-room hotel that has made itself remarkably
distinct from other hotels along the scenic Tagaytay
strip because of its highly personalized service offerings. The hotel provides guests staying overnight with
their own choice of pillows and pampering products
like soap and scents.
All of the hotel’s bedrooms, aside from being
equipped with iPod-ready speakers and docks, are pro-
vided with wireless Internet access. And they are also
equipped with LCD television sets and DVD players,
for which the hotel has an extensive DVD library of
movies that guests can view during their stay.
“What differentiates us from the usual hotels is
our more intimate, more personalized amenities,” says
Montelibano. “Unlike them, we have not provided
for gyms, swimming pools, ballrooms, and function
rooms. After all, when you simply want to relax on
a weekend, you don’t really need all of those things.
You just want to unwind.”
The Boutique faces the Taal Lake side of the cool,
mountaintop city of Tagaytay, just a few meters past
the downtown rotunda. It is located right in the middle of the commercial district, surrounded by a wide
range of restaurants and hangouts for tourists. Ongpauco and her partners started construction of this ho-
tel in May 2006 and opened it for occupancy in October or less than six months later.
In compliance with a city ordinance, most of the
hotel’s staff of 30 come from Tagaytay itself, but the
partners employ a chemist from Manila on an in-house
basis to make the fragrances that had been especially
formulated for use by The Boutique’s clientele.
The two majority owners of The Boutique are businesswomen with affluent family backgrounds. Ongpauco comes from the entrepreneurial family that owns the
Barrio Fiesta chain of restaurants, while Montelibano
belongs to the once politically active Lopez clan in the
Visayas. However, each of them has set out and made a
mark on her own. Ongpauco had put up and runs the
Bento Box food business, a casual-restaurant chain, a
bar, and a catering business, and Montelibano helps
manage the family-owned University of Iloilo.
The two have two other business partners in The
Boutique, Melon Santiago and Sweet Cañete, both
of whom are close friends who have been their regular traveling companions during their various trips
abroad. “It was actually a series of traveling experiences that inspired us to put up The Boutique,” Ongpau-
CONTACT DETAILS
he Boutique
was actually just
a typical bedand-breakfast when it
opened, but the partners
have come up with more
and more personalized
services after that.
Today, the hotel even
grants its guests such
extraordinary requests
as having their beds
sprinkled with roses,
having a birthday
cake delivered to
them at midnight, or
serving them dinner by
candlelight.
“We deal with
so many different
personalities who
demand a personalized
touch,” says Happy
Ongpauco. “Very often,
in fact, our clients
want to deal with us
directly, not through
our manager. Normally
in the hotel business,
the owners aren’t really
in the forefront. The
managers are supposed
to do that. In our case,
however, we have
ended up doing things
ourselves. That’s why
in this business, it’s
important to love what
you’re doing—and the
good thing is that we
really enjoy what we’re
doing.”
co says. “During our foreign trips, we would normally
choose a hotel for its uniqueness. We didn’t want to
stay in the usual five-star hotels.”
The Boutique has become a fairly successful venture after only two years in operation. The partners
say that even without putting up any paid advertising
and by relying mostly on word of mouth and on their
network of personal contacts, the hotel has been able
to generate a sizable clientele. “We felt that we had
become a success when the people coming in were
already those outside our circle of friends,” says Ongpauco. “Even during the lean months, in fact, people
kept coming in.”
Buoyed by their new hotel’s promising performance,
Ongpauco and Montelibano are now thinking of putting up a branch in Boracay and possibly also in Bohol,
Cebu, and even Baguio. “Our goal is to be able to open
one branch each year,” says Ongpauco. n
THE BOUTIQUE BED & BREAKFAST
45 Aguinaldo Highway, Silang Crossing East, Tagaytay City
Telephones: (046) 413-1798; (046) 413-1885 • E-mail: [email protected]
Website: www.theboutiquebnb.com
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Gingerie Red
A
lthough being
a franchisee
has its benefits,
Gingerie Red admits it
has its disadvantages,
too. Her profit margin
is slim because she has
to pay royalties to the
franchiser, she says, and
she couldn’t increase
the tuition because the
franchiser imposes a
price cap on it.
“But Kumon has
well-developed learning
materials and its
franchiser will also teach
you how to manage
the business,” she says.
“And, of course, the
Kumon
Learning Center
‘Given my math background,
I thought I chould operate a
Kumon Center of my own’
By Joel Adriano and Prima Gracia Sarmiento
A
fter living in the United States for 13
years, Gingerie Red came back to the
Philippines in late 1998 and wanted
to put up a business of her own. Having never been an entrepreneur, however, she didn’t know what venture to go into. She
had worked for six years with the administrative staff
at the University of California at Los Angeles, where
she obtained her B.S. in Mathematics in 1997, but
had no work experience other than that.
Red had to leave the US with her parents because they
decided to spend their retirement years back home. And
once they were settled in their hometown in Cavite, Gingerie did not look for outside employment, helping out
in the family-owned catering business instead.
A few months later, she partnered with two friends
to put up a computer shop. But that business folded up
after just a few months because her partners decided
to pursue other plans. She then decided to look for a
regular job and got employed by a German consumer
products company.
It was while working with that company that she
first heard of the Kumon Learning Center franchise.
The mention of “Kumon” reminded her of the children of a cousin back in the US who had enrolled in
a Kumon Center there. “I remembered being so impressed with the math skills of those kids, so I thought
that given my math background, perhaps I should operate a Kumon Center of my own,” she recalls.
Kumon Learning Center is a global franchise that
offers after-school supplemental education based on
the principles of the Kumon Method. Kumon is a
unique approach to teaching mathematics, developed in 1954 by Toru Kumon, a Japanese high school
math teacher.
Red so liked the teaching concept—strong on math
and reading skills—that she went to the Kumon Philippines’ headquarters in Makati City and applied for
a franchise. Several interviews later, she got the franchise and quit her job at the German firm to put up
her Kumon center.
Her total initial investment in Kumon came up to
P200,000—the total cost of the franchise and business
registration fees, the purchase of books and fixtures,
and the salaries of her staff. In December of 2001, Red
opened her Kumon Center in Kawit, Cavite. It charged
a course fee of about P1,460 a month for each student,
plus a one-time fee of P340 for registration. At the start, it had only
two teachers and four enrollees,
mostly children of her relatives.
They had two to three learning
sessions each week, each session
lasting 30 minutes to an hour.
To promote her center, Red gave out free trial-study
coupons and visited schools in Kawit to interest students and their parents in the Kumon method. But what
proved most effective in spreading the word about the
center was word of mouth. Most of the parents of the
center’s pupils, delighted by their children’s big improvement in their reading and math skills, recommended Kumon heartily to their friends and acquaintances.
franchise fee of only
P11,000 during that
time—it was 2001—was
cheap.”
Still, Red says
she’s quite happy as
a Kumon franchisee,
given her fondness for
mathematics and for
being with children. She
is also gratified that
she has a business that
gives her a respectable
living and allows her
to do what she loves
most. “By running a
Kumon center, in fact, I
discovered that teaching
is my vocation,” she
says.
By running
a Kumon
franchise,
GINGERIE RED
discovered
her teaching
vocation
CONTACT DETAILS
Red recovered her investment in the business less
than a year after the center opened. Today, the course
fee is P1,800, aside from a P500 registration fee. Her
Kumon center’s teaching force has grown to six and
its enrolment to 160 students a month, 60 percent of
whom are preschoolers taking lessons in reading and
comprehension. ■
KUMON LEARNING CENTER
2/F Heritage Building, 122 Kaingin St., Kawit, Cavite
Telephone: (046) 4847345 • Mobile: 0927-4103088 • Website: www.kumon.com.ph
S
tarting as a devoted beauty-product
user, TV-movie actress Gladys Reyes has
metamorphosed into a very enterprising
beauty-product dealer. At first, because
of her extremely sensitive skin, the sly,
spiteful villainess of what used to be the highly popular
Philippine TV shows Mara Clara and Bakekang was just
someone very picky with skin-care preparations. She
happens to have a particularly fair and smooth complexion, but she would rather use kalamansi (Philippine lemon) in natural form than skin-care products
laden with chemicals. “My skin, particularly my face, is
so sensitive that it immediately breaks out every time
I use a wrong product,” she says.
But sometime in September of 2005, Reyes received
an offer she couldn’t refuse: be the commercial endorser of KSA Magic, a new line of all-natural, chemical-
Gladys Reyes
KSA Magic
‘I had always wanted to be engaged
in something more stable’
By Katrina Tan
Photos byAt Maculangan
free beauty products. A maternal aunt of hers, professional chemist Elizabeth Perez de Tagle, had started
producing KSA Magic in 2005 and wanted to give
the line of products a public face.
“I had great faith in my tita’s [aunt’s] products because they really worked for me,” she says about her
decision. At the time, she was pregnant with her first
son, Gian-Christophe, and like all mothers-to-be,
she had developed stretch marks on her body as well
as some skin pigmentation. However, when she used
KSA Magic skin whitening soap and its other specially formulated creams, her skin quickly returned to its
natural radiant state.
So remarkable were the effects of her skin-care regimen that her friends and co-workers wanted to try
the products themselves and started ordering. “I began bringing them bagsful of KSA Magic products—
whitening and placenta soaps, exfoliating gels, and facial products,” she recalls. ”The demand was so great
that in one week, I’d sell no less than a box—that’s
100 bars—of KSA Magic soap alone.”
It was at that point when Reyes, in show business
for almost 20 years, decided to become a KSA Magic dealer. “In addition to being an actress, I had always wanted to be
Her
engaged in somehands-on
thing more staapproach
ble,“ she says. ”I
and
had actually conpresence
sidered opening
at the
a restaurant bestore
fore, but it required
literally
such a huge investbrings in
the crowd.
ment that I backed
out.”
She chose KSA because aside
from virtually having no overhead cost, the business required
only a few thousand pesos worth
of inventory. “Another thing is
that KSA products are very sellable,” she says. “They are for people from all walks of life—people
who can’t afford expensive beauty products but desirous of taking
good care of their skin.”
In October last year, Reyes opened her first KSA
Magic retail outlet at the Metropolis Star mall in Alabang, Muntinlupa City. “I was very hands-on in putting up that retail outlet,” she says. “I made it a point
CONTACT DETAILS
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V-movie
actress Gladys
Reyes admits
that her income as
a performer comes
much more easily
than that from the
KSA Magic venture,
but she says that her
dealership business is
much more stable and
regular.
“Although running
the dealership isn’t
easy, it’s something I
enjoy doing because
it allows me to meet
many different
people,” she adds.
Her celebrity helps
a lot in the business:
“Most people have the
impression that I’m
just an endorser of
KSA Magic products,
so it greatly surprises
them to see me in the
store actually doing
the selling. And when
they find out that
I’m the store owner
myself on top of being
a regular user of the
products, many of
them are disarmed
and actually buy.”
to go the barangay office myself to get the necessary
clearances. I personally submitted and followed up my
application to be a mall tenant and oversaw the store’s
construction myself.”
She recalls that at first, she and her husband Christopher Roxas, who is also an actor, didn’t know anything about store operations. “For this reason,” she
says, “we decided to go hands-on in the business.
Whenever we’re not doing taping for our shows, we
would run the store ourselves. He would do the cashiering and I would handle the sales talk.”
True enough, this approach appears to be a major
factor in the success of her dealership. Her TV plugs
for the products as well as her show-business clout have
been a big plus, of course, but it is her personal presence
in the store that literally brings in the crowd.
The KSA Magic line has expanded greatly since
then. It now has an ongoing consignment contract
with the Watson’s chain of beauty stores, and is now
also being sold at SM Supermarkets, Mercury Drug,
and 7-Eleven. n
KSA MAGIC
Metropolis Star–Alabang, South Superhighway, Muntinlupa City
Telephones: (02) 655-3110; (02) 645-5680
E-mail: [email protected] • Website: www.ksamagic.com
In 1998, SQL Wizard became the first company
in the Philippines to become an Oracle Certified Solution Partner. “The certification means that we had
met the Oracle’s standards in terms of product expertise and the quality of support services,” Salonga explains.
SQL went public in 2001, listing 20 percent of its
shares of stock on the small and medium enterprises
board (SME Board) of the Philippine Stock Exchange.
It was the very first company to be listed on the SME
Board, and its stock price tripled from P1.75 to P5.50
within the first week of listing. “My partners and I saw
our IPO [initial public offering] as a good way of getting additional capital,” Salonga explains.
SQL Wizard is widely recognized today for its expertise in the use of Oracle’s development tools. The
company now has over 300 clients nationwide across
such industries as transportation, energy, wholesale
and retail, education, insurance, and telecommunications, and it continues to enjoy the repeat business of
many of its oldest and long-standing clients.
The company focuses on database solutions or services. Its flagship product is DBA 911, a unique proactive system that it launched in 2003. “When clients
avail of our DBA 911 service, they are assured that we
will constantly be in touch to monitor their databases,” Salonga explains.
Salonga took over the helm of SQL Wizard in 2004
as its managing director. Her original partners still sit
as members of the board, but they have relinquished
their line functions in SQL Wizard after taking active
roles in other companies.
She emphasizes that SQL Wizard promotes strategic partnerships with clients in contrast to the oneoff service, which is the industry norm. “We decided
to provide an alternative method to doing business,”
she says.
Salonga sees further growth for SQL Wizard in the
next several years and hopes to develop a foreign market for its services. “There is room for more technopreneurs in the Philippines, and there are still so many areas in IT that remain untapped,” she says. n
Dina Salonga
SQL Wizard
‘There are still so many areas
in IT that remain untapped’
By Jaclyn Lutanco Chua
S
he never expected to become an entrepreneur, but even at a very early age,
Dina Salonga was already engaged in
small moneymaking ventures such as
selling cold drinks in summer. Even
when she was already grown up and had a regular job,
she would sell snacks to her officemates. Eventually,
she also went into the buying and selling of various
goods sourced from Divisoria. “From the proceeds of
that last business, in fact, I was able to buy my first
car,” she recalls.
In 1991, Salonga became the very first locally hired
employee of Oracle Philippines, the local subsidiary of
the US-based software company. After five-and-a-half
years with the company, she was invited by her friends
and business associates to partner with them in a new
information technology venture. “I accepted the invitation because the business conditions in the country were good at the time,” she says. “This was before
the Asian financial crisis, and in my case, after being
an employee for 17 years, I felt that having my own
business was the next logical step to take.”
The company she joined was SQL Wizard Inc.,
an IT partnership with the primary business of providing training, systems applications, and consulting services to Oracle customers in the Philippines.
Its service offerings were something that the multinational IT company, which was primarily engaged
in the selling of e-business products and solutions,
could not commit resources for and provide. Oracle
thus needed partner companies like SQL Wizard to
provide many of the technical support services required by its clients.
DINA SALONGA: SQL Wizard promotes strategic
partnerships with clients, ‘an alternative method
to doing business.’
CONTACT DETAILS
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B
eing a pioneer
entails facing
challenges with no
apparent ready solutions.
With a young sta� of
mostly new graduates,
SQL Wizard has sailed
through all such challenges
to become one of the top
business partners of Oracle
Philippines.
As managing director,
Dina Salonga treats the
sta� as her wards rather
than as her employees.
“I’m like the mother hen to
them,” she says.
Indeed, SQL Wizard
employees get at least 10
days of training every year,
both in technical skills as
well as in so� skills such
as business writing. And
for seven years now, the
company has been running
the Wizard Volunteers
Project, a year-long fundraising activity whose
proceeds go to the Yaman
Lahi Foundation, a private
science and research
foundation.
SQL WIZARD INC.
6/F 88 Corporate Center • Sedeño corner Valero Sts. Salcedo Village, Makati
• Telephone: (02) 889-6999 • Fax: (02) 889-6989 • Website: www.sqlwizard.com
Annabel Santos
Wisniewski
Museum Café
‘My mission now is
to give back to the people who
have helped us grow’
By Elaine Ruzul S. Ramos
N
Photo by Ocs Alvarez
o stranger to entrepreneurship, Annabel Santos-Wisniewski comes from
a family that set up what was to become one of Manila’s most famous
restaurants. Today, she owns and runs
two thriving companies that manage an impressive
number of upscale food establishments and hotelchain restaurants in the Philippines.
“It’s genetics—it’s in the blood,” says Annabel of
her being a food-service entrepreneur and manager.
Now the president of two companies, Raintree Partners and HSAI Raintree Hospitality Management,
she recalls that the Santos family had always been
keenly entrepreneurial. Way back in the 1940s, she
says, her grandparents and her father were engaged
in selling coffee packed in brown bags. Her mother, Honorata, now in her 90s, founded the highly
successful Bungalow Restaurant in Malate, Manila,
over 50 years ago.
It was at about this time that Annabel went to
the United States for her college studies. She took
up a hotel administration at Cornell University in
New York, becoming the very first Filipina to graduate from Cornell. For her bachelor’s degree, she did
a feasibility study for a Polynesian restaurant that
formed the basis for Luau Restaurant, a fine-dining
establishment that the Santoses later put up along
Roxas Boulevard in Manila.
ANNABEL SANTOS WISNIEWSKI: It’s not enough
to be passionate about a business;
one also has to learn to run it e�ectively.
Annabel ran Luau for one-and-a-half years.
When she turned 23, however, she was bitten by
the wanderlust and went back to the US to take
graduate studies at Cornell. There, she met a man
who was to become her future husband, Thomas
Wisniewski, and learned as much as possible about
the upscale restaurant business by working for the
Waldorf Astoria in New York and the Kahala Hilton in Hawaii.
In the 1970s, she came back to the Philippines
to rejoin the family business. By then the Santoses
had already branched out into the cafeteria-corporate food business, servicing as many as 28 companies that included such heavyweights as PLDT
and IBM.
But the Wisniewskis, who already had a growing
family by then, later decided to settle in the US to
raise their children there. They put up a partnership, ATW Enterprises, to manage two boutique hotels, the original Orchard Hotel in downtown San
Francisco and Casa Madrona in Sausalito, overlooking the San Francisco Bay. In 1995, however, Singapore-based Ascott Holdings, the general managers
of the Oakwood Residences, invited Annabel back
to the Philippines, appointing her country manager
and vice president for their local operations.
After two years, Annabel decided to go on her
own. She put up Raintree Partners to provide independent consulting work for such upscale clients
as the Four Seasons Hotel and Shangri-La Hotel.
Keen on establishing a stronger presence and better cash flow, Annabel not long after also decided
to go into operations. She formed another partnership, HSAI Raintree Hospitality Management, to
operate luxury hotels under management contracts
with the owners of Discovery Suites.
Raintree was later contracted by the Kuok Group
to develop a food court for its Enterprise Center
building in Makati City. In July of 1999, the Wisniewskis opened FoodParks there as the first salvo of FoodParks by Raintree, a new food-service
enterprise they had formed the year before. FoodParks also created its own food outlets, Lola’s Kitch-
CONTACT DETAILS
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H
ere’s what the
Wisniewskis
advise
entrepreneurs who
intend to go into of the
restaurant and hospitality
management business:
Go into a business that
you know. It’s not enough
to be simply passionate
about a business; one
also has to learn to run
it effectively. “Going
through the learning curve
minimizes the risks,” says
Annabel.
Stay focused. The
Wisniewskis will only
go into hospitality
management-related
ventures where they have
the expertise.
Invest wisely. Annabel
says it doesn’t hurt to
diversify and reinvent a
business. This way, when
one business isn’t doing
well, another will be able
to support it.
Analyze all the risk
factors. Restaurants
are high-risk businesses.
Andrej Wisniewski says
eight out of 10 restaurants
close down within a year
of its opening, and still
another closes down in the
next three years.
en and New York Café, as well as operated its own
full-service restaurants in the place.To oversee the
FoodParks business, the Wisniewskis tapped their
son Andrej.
Today, FoodParks also manages Food Odyssey at
the LKG Tower, Food & Art Galerie at GT Tower, and Food Patio at PBCom Tower, all in Makati.
For the high-end market, FoodParks owns and operates Museum Café in Makati and three other fullsize restaurants—Verbena in Tagaytay, Restaurant 5
at Discovery Suites, and Chelsea Deli at the Serendra Mall at Fort Bonifacio in Taguig City.
Annabel, now in her early 60s, doesn’t intend to
stop. “More than just the business, my mission now
is to give back to the people who have helped us
grow,” she says. “We want to make the Philippines
a better place by offering decent jobs with decent
pay. Our strongest motivation in staying profitable
is to generate more jobs.” n
Raintree Partners
6/F Salustiana Ty Tower, 104 Paseo de Roxas, Makati City
Telephone: (02) 752-5678
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Claude Tayag
Bale Dutung
‘Claude’9 is simply an offshoot
of my passion for food’
By Louise M. Francisco
A
multifaceted artist, Claudio “Claude”
Tayag strives for excellence in anything he creates: a painting, a sculpture, a piece of writing, a cooking recipe, even a business venture.
Five years ago, Tayag, 51, son of the late writer Renato “Katoks” Tayag, discovered that he could also
write. This happened when he was asked by a newspaper editor one day to put his thoughts in writing.
The artist CLAUDE
TAYAG is also a
celebrated chef,
and so his artistry
has given birth to a
growing business:
bottled specialty
food.
He did so and before long, he
was writing a weekly newspaper column. He then proceeded to write a book, Food
Tour, where he put together his most memorable dining experiences in the Philippines, in Asia, and in other
parts of the world.
All this didn’t really come as a surprise because Tayag also happens to be a natural cook, and over the
CONTACT DETAILS
years has even made himself a celebrated chef. Growing up in Angeles City in Pampanga at a time when
it was uncommon for men to cook, he had learned
the cooking art by simply observing his mother do
it. He then became an avid food hobbyist and eventually put up a specialty restaurant in Angeles City
to serve fine Kapampangan cuisine.
The restaurant, which he named Bale Dutung
(which is Kapampangan for “wooden house”), doesn’t
accept walk-in guests. It sets a minimum of 12 guests
and requires a reservation to be made two days in
advance. This restriction is in keeping with Tayag’s
desire not to turn his restaurant into a business that
would totally tie him down.
But what truly makes Bale Dutung unique is that
it showcases not only Tayag’s cooking talent but also
his artistry in building design and sculpture. Using
the camalig—the Spanish term for “warehouse”—as
inspiration, he had built the quaint but impressive
structure literally from scrap materials.
Now, Tayag has also become a serious entrepreneur. He is engaged in a growing business that he
considers simply as an extension of his artistry: bot2008 ENTREPRENEUR 41
& CELEBRITIES
TOP
TOPWOMEN
WOMEN
& CELEBRITIES
tled specialty food. His company, Bale Dutung Enterprises, produces various native food sauces and seasonings under the Claude’9 brand, among them balo-balo
(fermented rice with shrimps), purong taba ng talangka
(pure crab fat), and pesto.
“Claude’9 is simply an offshoot of my passion for
food,” Tayag says. “When ‘Darleng’ [his wife Mary
Ann] and I started this business in 2000, we actually just wanted to satisfy the cravings of our family
members and friends. They became our ‘guinea pigs’,
so to speak.”
As a product market test of sorts, the Tayag couple would prepare and serve various kinds of cuisine
to family members and friends during special occasions at their residence. The couple would then carefully take note which of the food were enjoyed by the
diners the most, and which were most frequently taken home by them. In time, Tayag’s wife came up with
a list of their favorites and eventually thought of selling them in bottled form.
“One December, we prepared a large batch of the
bottled products and gave them away as Christmas
presents,” Tayag recalls. “After that, simply through
word of mouth, many people came to know about the
products and started asking us about them. We therefore decided to make a trial delivery of a dozen bottles of Claude’9 to the Bon Appetit store at Rustan’s,
whose manager was our friend.”
Tayag then applied his artistry in designing the
bottles for Claude’9. For stronger customer appeal, he
put a picture of homemade foodstuffs on the packaging and featured lutong bahay (home-cooked) recipes
on the bottle labels.
The products are now carried by several other major supermarkets besides Rustan’s, but continue to be
homemade at the Tayag residence in Pampanga. With
the increasing demand for the product, the Tayags now
plan to put up a processing plant for it outside their
home. In the near term, they intend to further develop the niche market for Claude’9 in the country and
to establish the brand in the United States as an original and artistically Filipino-made product. n
CONTACT DETAILS
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hen Claude
Tayag was
presented
the opportunity to
establish a niche market
for his bottled Claude’9
products, he had no
idea of the complicated
processes he had to go
through to get the job
done.
To begin with, he
found out that every
food product to be
sold commercially
must comply with the
strict regulations of
the Bureau of Food
and Drugs (BFAD). He
recalls: “I didn’t have
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the patience to deal
with those requirements
of the BFAD, so it was
Mary Ann who did all
the necessary filings.”
They then hired
a food technologist
and created a food lab
to comply with BFAD
regulations. “You
see, I can cook but I
can’t bake,” explains
Claude. “I am the
salt-and-pepper-totaste type and can’t
follow instructions,
so somebody else has
to prepare the exact
quantity of the needed
ingredients for me.”
BALE DUTUNG ENTERPRISES
Paul Avenue, Villa Gloria Subdivision, Angeles City, Pampanga
Telephone: (045) 888-5163 • Mobile: 0917-5355163 • E-mail: [email protected]
CONTACT DETAILS
INNOVATORS
Entrepreneurial
imagination
P
erhaps nothing is as
innately intertwined
with entrepreneurship
as innovation. Since
the dawn of history,
businesses would boom
when they came out
with an exciting new
product or service—then
go bust when they ran out of fresh ideas to
deal with the competition.
Indeed, even before the late Peter Drucker
put the two terms together to form the
title of his landmark book Innovation and
Entrepreneurship, smart businesspeople all
over the world already knew how to take
advantage of the best ideas, create a whole
new market around them, and use them to
drive their companies to the top.
As Michael Vance, longtime idea- and
people-development executive of the Walt
Disney Co., says, “Innovation is the creation
of the new or the re-arranging of the old in
a new way.” He speaks from experience: the
legendary Disney imagination helped a small
2 ENTREPRENEUR 2008
animation studio grow to become the secondlargest media and entertainment conglomerate
in the world. (Called the “dean of creative
thinking” and a noted inspirational speaker,
Vance also popularized the phrase “thinking
out of the box.”)
This very same element—entrepreneurial
imagination—has propelled the 35 enterprising
people in the following pages to business
success. From a band leader who wanted to
teach pop music, to a man obsessed with kettlepopped corn, and on to a mother-and-daughter
team that sought to give more book choices
to bookworms like themselves, each of these
entrepreneurs found their niche, reached out to
serve their target markets, and prospered.
But no matter how much they had tweaked
an existing idea or how original their concepts
might have been, these innovators kept
themselves always on the lookout for ways to
stay ahead of the curve once their enterprises
were up and running. It’s no wonder that
many companies these days emphasize one
particular mantra for all their employees to
live by: innovate, or die.
INNOVATORS
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Butch
Albarracin
B
Center for Pop Music
‘We all have the potential to
be better than what we are’
T
his insight struck Butch Albarracin way
back in 1984: Filipinos love to sing and
many even become very good at it, but
the problem is that they are too shy to
perform onstage. So, he asked himself,
why not put up a music school that can give them
training in voice and stage performance?
With his background as a bandleader, Albarracin
thought that he should put up that school even if he
had no formal education in music. He wanted to concentrate on pop singing as a niche market. At the time,
so many music schools were focusing on classical music but hardly any on pop singing. He recalls: “There
were so few pop singing teachers, and they were mostly
of the type that goes to the student’s house and teaches their students one-on-one.”
So he established the Center for Pop Music as the
country’s first and only pop music school. It had only
30 enrollees that summer of 1984, certainly a pittance
compared to its current enrolment today, 24 years later:
4,000 in its 18 branches all over Metro Manila.
From giving only pop singing lessons, the center has
since expanded its course offerings to dance workshops,
musical instrument workshops, and onstage hosting.
It had also launched “Steps and Fashion,” a modeling
workshop for people between the ages of 7 to 24. During the lean months (enrolment hits its peak in summer
and significantly goes down thereafter), the center offers
events organization services to augment its income.
4 ENTREPRENEUR SPECIAL EDITION
fer the same dedication that I give
to the center,” he explains.
To this day, Albarracin doesn’t
have a competitor—at least none
that can match his music school
in terms of size and diversity of
curriculum. “The closest competitor I can think of has only one
school,” he says.
The Center for Pop Music curriculum is an interesting mix of
conventional voice training and
unorthodox exposure program. Explains Albarracin:
“Towards the end of their course, I take my students
out on a field trip to mall shows, even to strangers’
birthday parties at fast-food restaurants. I ask them
to perform during those events as part of their onthe-job training.”
The Center has also come up with a scholarship
program called IPS (“In Partner Scholarship”), which
it offers to big companies as employers. “If you are a
CEO and you think your secretary has the potential to
be a good singer,” he explains, “we will subsidize half
BUTCH
ALBARRACIN:
‘What we o�er
is a teaching
service, and
it’s hard to
find someone
who can o�er
the same
dedication
that I give to
the center.’
To further expand the center’s market reach, Albarracin thought of holding extension classes in the provinces, establishing tieups with selected schools. Franchising the Center for Pop Music would have been
easier and more lucrative, but Albarracin is extremely
hesitant to take that route. “What we offer is a teaching service, and it’s hard to find someone who can of-
CONTACT DETAILS
utch Albarracin
runs The Center
for Pop Music
with the same hands-on
passion he had given
it when he started it
24 years ago. Besides
personally selecting
and hiring his voice
coaches, he also trains
the center’s 200-plus
staff by himself. The
center’s major staff
training programs are
the biannual “Coaches’
University” for the
voice coaches, and the
biannual “Frontliners’
University” for the sales
staff.
Every week,
Albarracin gathers
the entire head office
staff for a get-together,
during which they do
Bible studies or attend
informal seminars on
topics that range from
good English grammar
to the Bible to chapters
from Rick Warren’s The
Purpose Driven Life.
Albarracin is
generous with staff
incentives. He gives
cash rewards for
various meritorious
achievements, from
meeting sales targets
to having a perfect
attendance for the
whole year—plus a
yearend “Presidential
Award” cash incentive
“to people who do
things for the center
above and beyond the
call of duty.”
of her tuition. You just take care of the other half.”
The Center has now a four-floor head office and,
among other amenities, houses a fully equipped concert theater. At the same time, Albarracin is exploring plans to set up a similar pop music center abroad
in communities where Filipinos are the majority. He
is also thinking of opening a “pop college” that would
offer a degree in pop music in the same way that, say,
the University of Santo Tomas’s Conservatory of Music offers a degree in classical music.
“Coaching is my ministry,” the deeply religious Albarracin says. “We all have the potential to be better
than what we are, and I believe it’s my God-given task
to hone that potential.” n
CENTER FOR POP MUSIC PHILIPPINES
12 Don A. Roces Ave., Quezon City • Telephones: (02) 444-7022; (02) 727-5293; (02) 411-7310
E-mail: cpmpheado�[email protected]
67 SUCCESS STORIES 5
INNOVATORS
Casa San Pablo
does not have
‘five-star’
amenities, but
its average
occupancy is an
impressive 80
percent—‘full’
by industry
standards.
Boots
Alcantara
Casa San Pablo
‘You have to be driven by the
passion to make people fall in
love with your hometown’
B
oots Alcantara was sure he would someday be his own boss even while he was
still an employee. “I felt that for the same
effort I was putting into my office work,
I could earn so much more as an entrepreneur,” he reasons.
Way back in college, in fact, he would buy slippers
and sell them to dorm mates at three or four times the
price he had paid for them—“a ridiculously easy way
to make money,” he says. When it was lanzones harvest time in San Pablo City, Laguna, his hometown,
he would fill up his car trunk with the fruit and sell
them to highway fruit stands on his way to Manila. For
a brief time, too, he sold family computers as a sideline while working as an assistant brand manager for
a food manufacturing company.
“I made so much more from buying and selling
than from the salary I was getting as an employee,”
he says. “It was a no-brainer: I wanted to be an entrepreneur.”
Alcantara found a major opportunity to become
one in the family’s seven-hectare ancestral compound
in San Pablo, which for years had served as private rest
grounds for the family and relatives. He saw that its
lush scenery and rustic trappings had the potential of
becoming a tourist destination. He then immediately
worked to realize this vision by putting up a bed-andbreakfast inn at the place, formally opening it as Casa
San Pablo in 1996.
Initially, Casa San Pablo only had enough rooms
for 20 people, but as word got around and visitors increased, Alcantara decided to build more rooms. Currently, the place could accommodate up to 130 guests,
and from the original bed-and-breakfast, it now offers overnight accommodations with three buffet
meals. It now also takes in day trips, half-day or evening-only events, like seminars, weddings, and product launchings.
Casa San Pablo’s charm—and success—lies in its
versatility as well as in its personalized services. On
weekdays, it caters to corporate clients doing seminars
or teambuilding sessions; and on weekends, to families
and barkadas (groups of friends) having an outing.
Alcantara says 35 percent of Casa San Pablo’s clients are repeat customers. “Typically, they are those
who come to our place for a corporate event, and they
often enjoy themselves so much that many of them later come back with their families in tow.” And whether the guests are there for a corporate function or for
a vacation, he makes sure he is present to personally entertain them.
He and his mother, Vinya, interact with the guests,
often eating with them (with food cooked in the family kitchen) and sometimes even serving as their tour
organizers. Long-time family helpers of the Alcantaras comprise the inn’s staff, with Alcantara calling
on extra help from around San Pablo only when the
need arises.
Despite the ever-increasing demand for bookings
CONTACT DETAILS
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oots Alcantara
of Casa San
Pablo strongly
believes that there is
a lot of potential for
the country’s tourism
entrepreneurs today.
“More and more
Filipinos are eager
to get to know our
country and to explore
off-the-beaten-path
destinations like ours.”
However, he advises
people who want
to become tourism
entrepreneurs to love
the town or province
they are in and truly
immerse themselves in
its culture. “You have
to be driven by the
passion to make people
fall in love with your
hometown and your
country,” he says. “After
all, it is this passion that
people are attracted
to and want to support
through tourism.”
at Casa San Pablo, Alcantara is hesitant to expand
too much, too fast. “Our wide, open space is our selling point,” he explains. “We want to maintain an atmosphere where guests can truly relax and recharge.”
So, for now, he just wants to focus on building up his
daytrip and wedding clientele.
Casa San Pablo doesn’t provide its guests with free
toiletries, and its scaffolding-style double-deck beds
can be taken apart or put together depending on the
number of occupants of the room. It’s definitely no
five-star digs, but its average occupancy is an impressive 80 percent, which by industry standards is considered “full.”
Alcantara is a member of Viaje del Sol, a strategic alliance of the various arts and tourism destinations stretching from Laguna to Quezon. “Rather than compete with each other, we have banded
together to present ourselves as joint destinations,”
he says. “We tell our guests that through Viaje del
Sol, they would have a much wider range of experiences to choose from. I would say that a big part
of our growth has been achieved because we chose
to link arms and support one another rather than
compete.” n
CASA SAN PABLO
Gomez Compound, Barangay San Roque, San Pablo City • Mobile: 0917-8126687; 0920-9624083
E-mail: [email protected] • Website: www.casasanpablo.com
INNOVATORS
Angeli
Beltran
-Lambsdorff
Sugarnot
‘There are so many diabetics in
this country, but there’s a lack of
diabetic-friendly options’
By Katrina Tan
W
Ihen Filipinos with a sweet tooth
discover they have diabetes,
they used to say goodbye forever
to their craving for sweets.
Not anymore. With Sugarnot, a revolutionary new restaurant, diabetics now
have a safe and delightful way to fully enjoy their favorite treats.
A bakeshop, coffee shop, and deli all rolled into
one, Sugarnot has developed a wide menu of lowcarbohydrate, low-fat, and totally sugar-free items—
from cakes and cookies to light meals, soups, and
sandwiches.
Sugarnot is the brainchild of Eli Beltran, a dessert-loving architect who was diagnosed with diabetes in 2002. Frustrated by the limited number of locally available food choices, Beltran began to search
for satisfactory alternatives from the Internet and
from cookbooks.
Says Beltran’s daughter, Angeli Beltran-Lambsdorff: “There are so many diabetics in this country,
but there’s a lack of diabetic-friendly options. My father and I saw this, so we decided to start a line of
sugar-free baked goods. But instead of just having a
sugar-free section on the menu, as most eating plac8 ENTREPRENEUR SPECIAL EDITION
es do, we wanted all of our dishes to be healthful and
sugar-free.”
The Beltrans didn’t have to start from scratch. The
family used to have a bakeshop, Hansel and Gretel,
from 1980 to 1986, and Beltran-Lambsdorff’s advertising background was a great help in the design and
marketing of Sugarnot. Her husband Wolf Lambsdorff,
the current CEO of Sugarnot, brought in operational
know-how from his former job as operations head of
the Padi’s Point chain of bar-restaurants.
To be absolutely certain about the nutritional con-
tent of their sugar-free food offerings, the Lambsdorffs
consulted with a diabetologist and a nutritionist and
had all the items in the menu analyzed by SGS Laboratories. They also checked with suppliers what ingredients would best suit particular recipes, then conducted the necessary taste tests.
At the same time, they began developing the Sugarnot brand in 2003. They commissioned Indio Dentsu Communication, the advertising agency where Beltran-Lambsdorff works, to create the Sugarnot logo
and corporate identity. The result was the wholesome
yet fun, modern look of the restaurant.
The investment capital for Sugarnot came from the
Beltran family and their local partners as well as from
international investors. The funds went to purchasing restaurant equipment and constructing the Sugarnot commissary and its restaurant outlets.
Two years of research and preparation later, Sugarnot opened its commissary and first branch along
South Superhighway in Makati City in November
2005. The shop, initially run by
Two years of
four employees, carried about 10
research and
items that included cakes, cookpreparation
ies, and muffins.
preceded
the opening
of this
sugar-free
restaurant.
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espite
Sugarnot
being a familyrun business, its
management team
makes it a point to
keep everything
professional. Angeli
Beltran-Lambsdorff
says they spent a
lot of time planning,
drafted formal
business and financial
plans, and established
well-defined areas
of responsibility and
guidelines. Also, none
of the partners have
signing privileges in
Sugarnot restaurants;
they must pay for
whatever they order.
Sugarnot decided
not to use the most
common sugar
substitutes available
in the market. Instead,
it went for isomalt,
a derivative of beets
imported from
Germany. Also, its
kitchens use only olive
oil for baked goods
and don’t fry any of its
dishes.
Beltran-Lambsdorff says that Sugarnot’s success was
partly due to its perfect timing. The no-carb diet trend
was at its peak, driving to Sugarnot’s doors many diabetics, health buffs, and people who just wanted to
eat well. For this reason, she says, she makes sure all
Sugarnot employees are knowledgeable about sugarfree products, and can satisfactorily answer any customer concern.
Each of Sugarnot’s two branches—one at The
Podium and the other at SM Megamall—serves
up to a hundred customers a day, with nearly half
of the patrons also purchasing items for take-out.
Sugarnot recently opened its restaurants for franchising, offering five-year franchises for either kiosks to full stores. n
CONTACT DETAILS
SUGARNOT
5/F SM Megamall, Mandaluyong City • Telephones: (02) 637-2706; (02) 889-3427
Fax: (02) 889-4573 • E-mail: [email protected] • Website: www.sugarnot.com.ph
INNOVATORS
n
a
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P
ersonalization is
at the heart of
the Viktor Jeans
franchise. If you want
to follow in Ino Caluza’s
footsteps, here are
three important things
to remember:
Learn to sew, and buy
a sewing machine.
If you are not so
creatively inclined,
taking dressmaking
lessons might help.
Learn what the
customer wants,
and follow it. Caluza
proudly points out
that each pair of
Viktor jeans
targets people
who value
exclusivity
and individual
expression.
Every pair is
customized and
cra�ed down
to the smallest
detail.
Ino Caluza
Viktor Jeans
‘It’s a love affair between the
client and the product’
By Rafael Santos
T
all, almost hawkish in appearance, clothing designer Ino Caluza is as outspoken as the clothes he creates. He is the
brains behind the upscale clothing store
Viktor, an outlet that offers edgy designs
tailored for the affluent market. He speaks his mind
with the conviction of a grizzled drill instructor, especially when talking about the mystique that his brand
has steadily built over the last couple of years.
“Viktor is much more than a pair of jeans,” he
says. “It’s a love affair between the client and the
product.” He talks while perched on a designer chair,
gesturing with one hand while deftly using the other to
get a client’s body dimensions with a tape measure.
But catering to other people’s clothing needs was
the last thing on Caluza’s mind when he started making Viktor jeans in 2005. He simply got so addicted to wearing designer jeans, buying as many as two
to three pairs a month. After amassing a closetful of
jeans, however, he realized that he was spending unrealistically on them.
“I came to the conclusion that to feed my addiction
to designer jeans, I had to make them myself according to my own specifications,” he recalls. “So I decided
to learn how to sew and later bought my own sewing
machine. The business just grew from there.”
What started simply as a jeans junkie’s pitch two
years ago is now a much-sought-after designer brand.
The edgy style of Viktor jeans has attracted a cult following among the well-heeled. Indeed, to meet the
growing demand for Viktor jeans, Caluza had since put
up a three-story factory in Antipolo City that manufactures his made-to-order jeans.
“The factory
and my outlets
at The Podium in Ortigas Center and at Trinoma in
Quezon City are rather huge investments, but I am
glad that I made them because they have cut down
costs for me and they have enabled me to expand my
label,” he says.
Viktor jeans targets people who value exclusivity and individual expression. Every pair is customized
and crafted down to the smallest detail desired by the
customer, from the trim to the hue all the way to the
stitching that dots each pair. There is a limited production run for each style of jeans, and each pair is
provided with a stitched number code.
Such degree of exclusivity comes with a hefty price
tag: a pair of Viktor jeans sells from a low of P4,000 to
a high of P7,000 depending on the style and the customer’s specifications.
“People are willing to spend money to be unique,”
says Caluza, “so I give each pair of Viktor jeans the
CONTACT DETAILS
Viktor Jeans is crafted
according to the client’s
desires, down to the
smallest detail. He even
puts a serial number on
each to emphasize its
exclusivity.
Locate your shop
in a place that’s
accessible to your
target clientele. The
Viktor Jeans outlets
in upscale shopping
malls, for instance, are
meant to attract the
“Class A” buyer who
is more likely to be
able to afford a pair of
personalized jeans.
personalized touch. I only make jeans that I myself
would want to wear, and this for me is the most important thing. So if a client wants a pair that I think
isn’t appropriate for him, I suggest alternatives in a
good-humored way.”
Caluza says his brand is not for everybody, and
he admits that he cannot compete with RTWs because he just couldn’t bear the thought of mass-producing his jeans. Despite these self-imposed limitations, however, he says that business has been
surprisingly good.
“The market’s reception of Viktor jeans year has
been great,” he says. “This is why I plan to roll out new
products that target the youth market, and I am also
thinking of diversifying into more product lines.”
As his company grows, he intends to keep up the
tradition of innovation started by Viktor jeans. “It’s
not enough to have good products,” he says. “To avoid
floundering in this kind of business, you must keep on
improving them.” n
INO CALUZA
Viktor Denim Republic • Address: 4/F The Podium 18 ADB Avenue, Ortigas Center, Pasig City
Telephone: (02) 631-6440 • Blogspot: www.viktordenimrepublik.blogspot.com
INNOVATORS
Ian
Carandang,
Tony Bondoc
and Vito
Lazatin
Sebastian’s
Ice Cream Studio
‘The key is providing quality
products at competitive prices’
A
Photos by Jun Pinzon
lthough ice cream is considered a favorite dessert of Filipinos, bulk ice cream
sales by the big multinational companies and large food and beverage corporations have actually been dropping
in the last few years. This is because the big ice-cream
makers have to import 99 percent of their dairy requirements, making the business highly vulnerable to foreign currency fluctuations. This, in turn, has made it
difficult for them to price their ice cream more competitively.
This explains why lower-cost ice cream makers—
most of whom are local companies—now enjoy a 70
percent market share compared to only 30 percent a
few years back. Among the novelty ice cream makers
making good in this changing market is Sebastian’s Ice
Cream Studio, a business that started simply as a hob-
by for young restaurateur Ian Carandang.
Inspired by the success of the Ben & Jerry’s ice
cream brand in the United States, Carandang started experimenting with various ice cream flavors in
2000 and offered them as desserts at his Hotstix Barbecue restaurant in Quezon City. Five years later, in
2005, radio and television host Vito Lazatin and his
friend Tony Bondoc, both in their 30s, partnered with
Carandang to expand his ice cream business. They
called their company Sebastian’s Ice Cream Studio.
Each of the partners invested P30,000 in the company, using funds pooled from their savings and from
loans they had obtained from relatives. They then
began supplying fine-dining restaurants with their
ice cream. At the same time, they started developing
ice cream flavors to be supplied exclusively to particular restaurants.
The ice cream operations of the partners worked
well, allowing them to expand and put up their very
own ice cream kiosk at the Alabang Town Center in
Muntinlupa City in May 2006. They located their kiosk in the cinema area of the mall, and they scheduled its opening to coincide with the opening of the
movie The Da Vinci Code in theaters. “We opened on
a weekday and sold well past breakeven point without doing any promotions or grand openings,” Carandang recalls.
Since then, the Sebastian’s Ice Cream Alabang kiosk
has been selling a daily average of 40 to 60 scoops on
weekdays and 120 scoops on weekends and holidays.
The partners had generated consumer interest in
their ice cream largely from positive word of mouth
and through dessert blogs on the Web. “Filipinos have
a sweet tooth; you don’t have to be rich to appreciate
good food,” Carandang says.
Since then, the partners have opened two more
outlets—one at The Podium at the Ortigas Center,
and the other at the SM North EDSA The Block in
Quezon City. Carandang says their ideal locations are
upscale malls where they can attract and serve customers who truly care about ice cream.
Sebastian’s
Among their bestsellers are choctargets people
olate chip cookie dough, banana
who truly
bonanza, chocoholics anonymous,
care about ice
peppermint brownie, and macadacream.
mia white.
“We want to make the best ice cream out there,”
he explains. “In fact, to give you an idea about our cost
of production, we use three and a half kilos of mangoes in just one gallon of ice cream. Our ice cream is
not anything simple.”
Tony Bondoc, who oversees the company’s finances, attributes the five-fold growth of the assets of Sebastian’s Ice Cream Studio to the partners’ shared and firm
belief in giving customers their money’s worth. n
CONTACT DETAILS
n
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he local market
for ice cream is
still very much
open. The National
Statistics Office-Family
and Income Expenditure
Survey says Filipinos
spent P2.3 billion on
ice cream alone in
1997. Another study
done in 2004 put total
ice cream production,
including other frozen
desserts, at nine million
liters. These figures
actually indicate a low
per capita consumption
of ice cream, which,
according to the same
NSO survey, amounts to
less than one liter per
person per year.
Indeed, the
experience of
Sebastian’s Ice Cream
Studio’s founders
validates the NSO
survey’s conclusion
that there is a large
ice cream market
waiting to be tapped.
This should be strong
enough reason for
entrepreneurs to
seriously explore
going into the novelty
ice cream business
themselves.
SEBASTIAN’S ICE CREAM STUDIO
INNOVATORS
Reyvic Cerilles
and Joseph Jagoring
Estetico Manila
‘Pampering your clients and
going the extra mile are musts
in the business’
By Rafael Santos
T
he Philippines is in an excellent position to get a big slice of the fast-growing medical tourism market because of
its large pool of highly trained medical
professionals. In the next five years, in
fact, the Philippine government is targeting as much
as $2 billion in income from medical tourism and
from foreigners who have made the Philippines their
retirement haven.
Estetico Manila, a medium-sized clinic, is one of
the medical establishments that have been benefiting
from the growth of the country’s medical tourism. Put
up only in 2005, it is run by two medical partners: Dr.
Reyvic Cerilles, a cosmetic surgeon, and Dr. Joseph
Jagoring, a dentist. Over the last two years, the partners have seen their clientele grow to 200 patients a
month on the average, most of them seeking cosmetic
surgery, dermatology, and cosmetic dentistry services.
Of this clientele, 60 to 70 percent are foreigners and
returning overseas Filipino workers (OFWs).
The most sought-after services in Estetico Manila
are rhinoplasty (nose jobs), breast enhancements, and
dental implants. The clinic charges fees ranging from
P60,000 to P80,000 for major surgical procedures,
and as low as P1,000 for dental cleaning. The partners perform most of the simpler surgical procedures
in the clinic itself, but do the more complicated surgical procedures in affiliated hospitals.
the other hand, had invested about P500,000 to purchase an operating table and equip the clinic’s operating room.
The partners in Estetico Manila share the responsibility for funding and running the enterprise.
When they put up their clinic, Cerilles and Jagoring
and their former business partner, Dr. Erick G. Ducut, each contributed P500,000 to a pool to pay for
the clinic’s design and construction and for the lease
of the clinic space.
Dr. Cerilles and Dr. Jagoring both say that pampering your clients and going the extra mile are musts
in the business. They say that they even go to the extent of picking up their foreign clients from the airport and bringing them to their hotels—in some cases even taking them out for dinner. They do all these
to ensure a high rate of return business and more referrals from satisfied clients. n
n
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Targeting foreigners seeking medical treatment
could be lucrative, but it is also very challenging. Entrepreneurs who want to enter this industry need to
invest in world-class medical equipment, which does
not come cheap. In Jagoring’s case, his dental equipment had cost him around P1 million to P2 million,
payable over a period of several years. Cerilles, on
Estetico
Manila has
benefited from
the growth of
the country’s
medical
tourism
industry. The
doctors see
an average of
200 patients a
month.
CONTACT DETAILS
rs. Reyvic
Cerilles and
Joseph Jagoring
of Estetico Manila
give the following
suggestions to those
intending to go into
the medical tourism
business:
Define roles clearly.
If the clinic is a
partnership, the role
of each partner must
be clearly defined
in writing, including
specific responsibilities
and size of investment.
Invest in world-class
medical equipment.
They don’t come cheap,
but they will be worth
the trouble. Never
acquire inferior—and
potentially dangerous–
devices for the operating
room.
Pamper your clients.
Targeting foreigners is a
lucrative but challenging
way to boost the
business. Make sure,
though, that they are
satisfied and happy
with your services at all
times. Go the extra mile
as much as possible.
Do a great job all the
time. This will not only
boost your clinic’s
chances of getting
more clients but will
also keep you from
getting blacklisted in the
medical profession.
ESTETICO MANILA
Unit 501/502 Oakridge Plaza, 101 San Antonio St., Paseo de Magallanes, Makati City
Telephone: (02) 854-4933 • Mobile: 0917-8104334 • Website: www.esteticomanila.com
INNOVATORS
Robertson Chiang
Mozcom
‘The challenge for us now is to
find a new role in this new world’
By Rheea S. Hermoso-Prudente
W
hen it set up shop in August
1994 as the country’s very first
commercial Internet service
provider, Mosaic Communications Inc. (Mozcom) attracted
a lot of customers. Being a pioneer in the field, however, the company faced formidable logistics and financial challenges, and its eventual climb to success
certainly wasn’t easy.
Mozcom was founded by Dr. Willy Gan and Dr.
William Torres; they already had a working familiarity with the Internet long before they joined forces to put up the company. Dr. Gan owned Computer Network Systems Corp. (ComNet), a supplier of
computers and network equipment, and Dr. Torres, then connected with the National Computing Commission (NCC), was the first to come up
with the idea of connecting the Philippines to the
Internet.
ComNet, then on contract with the Department of
Science and Technology (DOST), had set up the Internet connection of the Philippine Network Foundation
(PHnet), the country’s first Internet-based academic
network that linked such major universities as Ateneo,
La Salle, and the University of the Philippines.
Mozcom became the commercial offshoot of that
idea, and the partnership between Drs. Gan and Torres worked beautifully for the startup company. Mozcom was able to get most of its equipment on lease
from ComNet. And to get the new company started, ComNet agreed to loan to
The challenge
Mozcom as many of its personnow for dial-up
nel as needed during its first
Internet service
six months of operation.
providers ‘is to
“Getting a direct connecfind a new role in
tion
to the US during those
this new world’ by
days
was incredibly expengoing higher up the
value chain, says
sive,” recalls Robertson ChiMozcom’s
ang, Mozcom’s current chief
ROBERTSON
operating officer and chief
CHIANG.
technology officer. “And as
we got more and more subscribers, we had to keep
increasing our bandwidth. So it was a never-ending cycle of upgrades. Any money that was flowing
in went right out the door for the purchase of more
equipment and greater bandwidth.”
Indeed, the company’s initial capital of P2 million all went to network equipment purchases and
to its monthly payments to the telephone company. Because the technology was so new, prices of Internet equipment and setup gear were uncommonly
high. And at that time, a 64 kilobit per second (kbps)
leased line from PLDT was incredibly expensive—
about US$1,000 monthly (or P26,410 at the 1994 average exchange rate) compared to a P1,000-DSL connection today that transmits data 30 times faster.
Mozcom’s first service offering was dialup Internet
access, which it sold to subscribers at about P200 for
every five hours. “Since the Internet was very new
and the press provided a lot of buzz, people just kept
on coming for the service,” says Chiang. “We hardly
did any formal marketing.”
In 1998, Mozcom established the very first international dialup roaming service for Filipinos through
a partnership with iPass, a global network with thousands of dialup access worldwide. Today, Mozcom is the
only service provider that’s not a telephone company
with major points of presence across the country.
Now that the telephone companies are offering
broadband Internet, however, plain connectivity is
no longer king. “The challenge for us now is to find a
new role in this new world,” Chiang says. “We have
to go higher up the value chain and provide more services than what the telcos can offer.”
It is for this reason that Mozcom has diversified in
recent years into such value-added services as biometric solutions (statistical analysis of biological observations and phenomena), network-based cameras, video
conferencing, turnkey e-commerce solutions, online
payment processing, and retail solutions.
As the country’s largest non-telco Internet service
provider today, Mozcom now also serves as mobile content (SMS) provider for two of the cellular phone companies, Globe and Smart. It has also gone into medical
CONTACT DETAILS
n
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weeping changes
in the Internet
industry have
profoundly altered
Mozcom’s target
market. Before, its
primary market—and
the source of over half
of its revenues—was
home users with dialup
access, but the advent
of cheaper and faster
DSL access has changed
the picture.
“The dialup market
has been eroded,”
explains Robertson
Chiang. “The Internet
market is now a mass
market and the telcos
are better structured to
work with that market.”
Thus, Mozcom,
which currently has
a workforce of 80,
now largely services
corporate clients and
small- and mediumscale enterprises
that need Internet
connectivity and
support, and is
pursuing a strong
advocacy for ecommerce in the
Philippines. It is doing
the latter primarily
through its PayEasy
service, which offers
hosting, payment
processing, backend
support, and marketing
and advertising to
prospective clients.
transcription services (www.moztranscription.com),
online music portal services (www.fliptunes.net), online book sales (www.mybookstore.ph), online flower sales (www.virtualblooms.com), and online photo
developing (www.picatoo.com) n
MOZCOM
6/F The Peak, 107 L.P. Leviste St., Salcedo Village Makati CityTelephone: 848-2606
Fax: 840-4434 • E-mail: [email protected] • Website: www.mozcom.com
INNOVATORS
Derrick
Chiongbian
thing you can eat anytime, not just when you’re
watching a movie,” he explains.
As a marketing clincher, he made the price of his
popcorn ridiculously affordable—at that time, P60
for a big bag, and P25 for a small one. (They now
sell for P70 and P30, respectively.) This was much
lower than the P80 to P120 charged for the product
in movie houses.
The number of Holy Kettle Corn outlets had
grown to 100 by mid-2008, 50 of them in Metro
Holy Kettle Corn
‘Popcorn is something you
can eat anytime, not just when
you’re watching a movie’
DERRICK
CHIONGBIAN
wanted to let
people know
that popcorn
is a healthier
alternative
to chips, and
avoided putting
up booths
beside cinemas.
M
ost people have the longstanding
notion that all popcorn tastes the
same, and that they’re sold only
in the concession stands of movie theaters.
Holy Kettle Corn’s market entry in 2004 has not
only helped dispel these twin notions but also made
eating popcorn exciting again to thousands of Filipinos. In fact, over 100 Holy Kettle Corn retail booths
have sprung up nationwide since then.
The brand’s phenomenal success has no doubt
been brought about by its many distinctive product
features and its entirely different marketing and distribution approach. The product has a unique “kettle
corn flavor” that hovers delightfully between sweet
and salty. Hand-popped fresh every day right in the
retail outlet itself, it uses only corn oil instead of vegetable oil, and it absolutely has no butter or monosodium glutamate. Unlike theater-bound popcorn, it
is easily available—you can buy Holy Kettle Corn
from retail booths found in malls, in train stations,
even in gasoline stations.
Holy Kettle Corn is the brainchild of Derrick Chiongbian, who, after first tasting kettle-popped corn
in the United States, became so addicted to it that
he would eat a whole bag of it every day for weeks.
A serial entrepreneur who is always on the lookout
for business opportunities, Chiongbian concluded
that kettle-popped popcorn would sell well in the
Philippines. Thus, in May 2004, he invited a friend,
Aristotle Alipon, to be his partner in producing this
popcorn for the local market.
To tap the ever-increasing market of health-conscious snackers, Chiongbian positioned his product
as a healthier alternative to chips. He deliberately
avoided putting up his booths near cinemas, choosing instead high foot-traffic locations such as schools,
gasoline stations, MRT stations, and malls. “We
wanted to let people know that popcorn is some-
n
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D
errick
45 percent compared
Chiongbian is
to the usual 40 to
such a fan of
44 percent for good
popcorn that before he
popcorn kernels.
launched Holy Kettle
He was also able
Corn, he actually did
to find a supplier of
painstaking research
a special China-made
on the product. With
plastic-lined bag for his
what he learned, he
cooked popcorn. The
was able to close a
bag costs five times
deal with a farmer in
more than a regular
Nebraska to exclusively
popcorn bag, but
supply him with corn
keeps popcorn fresh
kernels that expand the
and crunchy for up to
most when popped—an
three days when left
expansion ratio of 42 to
unopened.
Manila. In 2006, the company had supplied up to
14,000 in-flight snack packs a month to the domestic airline Asian Spirit, although the airline stopped
its orders after five months to cut down on its operating costs. In October 2007, however, another airline, Air Philippines, started offering Holy Kettle
Corn snack packs in selected flights.
In September 2007, Chiongbian added flavored
popcorn to his product line after exclusively selling
only kettle-popped corn for three years. “It took us a
while to do so because we didn’t want to roll out anything mediocre,” he says. He also plans to open the first
overseas branch of Holy Kettle Corn sometime soon.
At the moment, however, his company’s priority is to fine-tune its internal systems. “Holy Kettle
Corn’s fast growth has taken us by surprise,” Chiongbian admits. “For a time, our main office had always been playing catch-up in monitoring the status
and performance of our retail booths. Now we are
implementing a computer system that can monitor
our entire inventory not only in our warehouse but
also in all our booths nationwide.” n
CONTACT DETAILS
BLUE KETTLE CORP.
364 Apo St., Mandaluyong City • Telephones: (02) 534-6781; (02) 534-8293
INNOVATORS
Bayani Coching
Mercury Freight International
‘Making the business viable
didn’t happen so easily’
I
t had a rough start as a customs brokerage
and cargo consolidator in 1987, but Mercury
Freight International Inc. now ranks among
the country’s top 10 logistics companies servicing Asian destinations and has become one of
the top 20 most competitive companies serving global
destinations. In joint venture with “K” Line Air Service Ltd. of Japan, it also runs an international freight
forwarder and licensed customs brokerage company,
“K” Line Air Service Philippines Inc.
The founder-owner of Mercury Freight is Bayani Coching, a former bookkeeper who rose from the
ranks to manage Bell Brokerage Inc., the logistics arm
of the Smith Bell Group of Companies, in the 1970s
and early 1980s. He recalls: “It was in Bell Brokerage that I learned about freight forwarding and cargo handling and how to run the different aspects of
the business.”
With the training and exposure to global logistics
that the company had given him, Coching acquired
the confidence to put up an international brokerage
firm of his own. He believed that he could make a go
of it because he had by then developed an extensive
network of contacts with key foreign agents. To secure good projects from overseas, however, he joined
forces with a friend—a silent partner—who had important business connections in
Mercury
various foreign countries. TogethFreight’s
er, they put up Mercury Freight in
strong
1987 and immediately bagged a
commitment
major project: handling the carto quality
go requirements of a $26-million
and its total
housing project at Clark Air Base
transparency
in dealing with in Angeles City.
customers,
Although it received advance
partners and
funding from its client (a major
agents are
American construction firm), Merreasons for its
cury Freight experienced a very
growth.
difficult first year of operation.
“Making the business viable didn’t happen so easily,”
Coching says. “We were incurring so much in expenses before the revenues could come in.”
After running Mercury Freight for 20 years, however, Coching now knows the business like the back of
his hand. He has developed economies of scale in moving cargo for clients and has learned to hire additional manpower only if absolutely necessary. In particular, after finding out that most companies have fixed
timetables anyway for shipping their goods, Coching
now routinely uses sea freight
instead of air freight. He knows
that companies would exercise
the air-freight option only if they
need to send goods very urgently
due to a tight production schedule. Mercury Freight, of course,
also offers this option.
In 1989, the company used
the profits from its first cargo
handling project to purchase
property for a bigger office in
Parañaque City. It has since held its main office in
this location, where it currently employs 150 welltrained people. Over the years, however, the company has also branched out to Cebu, Clark (Pampanga), Cavite, Laguna, and Manila.
In 1990, Coching further beefed up the business
by going into a joint venture with “K” Line Air Service Ltd. of Japan. He had served that company when
he was still an agent of the Smith Bell Group, and he
decided to partner with it to complement Mercury
Freight’s logistics business, which up to that time was
still limited to sea freight transport. “I was flattered
that they wanted to work with me again,” he says.
Mercury Freight has reinvested into the business
all the profits it has made. Its head office and warehouse in Parañaque City represent a very substantial
portion of those investments.
Two major factors in the company’s continuing
growth are its strong commitment to quality and its
total transparency in dealing with customers, partners,
and agents. Indeed, in 2001, in recognition of the qual-
CONTACT DETAILS
n
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eing accessible to potential customers is a
key ingredient to the success of a logistics
company, and Bayani Coching precisely
had this in mind when he formed the Mercury
Freight sales organization. He therefore decided
to base the company’s sales offices as near as
possible to the country’s export processing zones.
In 1990,
knowing that
export shipments
generate as much
as 80 percent of the
business, Coching
established provincial
offices in quick
succession at the
export processing
zones in Mariveles,
Bataan, in Cebu,
and in Cagayan
de Oro. The following year, he opened a fourth
branch, this time at the Cavite Export Processing
Zone. He opened a fifth in Davao in 1993 and
followed this with a sixth in 1995 at the Laguna
Technopark in the Sta. Rosa and Biñan area.
In 1996, he moved the Cebu office of Mercury
Freight to a bigger location at the Mactan Export
Processing Zone.
ity of its operations, Mercury Freight received certification from SGS UK Ltd. as an ISO 9002-compliant firm.
“We’ve created a niche in the industry because of the
way we operate,” Coching explains. “Reputation and
reliability are very important in the brokerage business.
For your relationship with your customers to really work,
you need honesty, mutual trust, and respect.”
Besides running Mercury Freight, Coching has diversified on his own into the food business and into purified drinking water. “Any business can get congested
or saturated so you have to think of other businesses
as alternatives,” he says. n
MERCURY FREIGHT INTERNATIONAL INC.
Mercury Freight Logistics Center, Ninoy Aquino Ave. corner A. Bonifacio St. Parañaque City
Telephone: (02) 830-2033 • Fax: (02) 829-1938; (02) 826-2686
INNOVATORS
Charlie Dobles
and Drew Marcelo
Spoofs Limited
‘The best way to test your market
is to sell to actual customers’
By Iela Karunungan
CHARLIE DOBLE and DREW
MARCELO: ‘The idea for Spoofs
came to us on the eve of the
deadline’ for a school paper.
T
o describe The T-Shirt Project as an evergreen novelty may seem to be an oxymoron
but that’s exactly what it’s all about. Indeed,
the project proponents—business partners
and long-time friends Charlie Dobles and
Drew Marcelo—have had what is perhaps the longest-running moneymaking joke on the business scene.
Each of the company’s brands, now all housed under
the T-Shirt Project, is an outgrowth of Spoofs Limited
Inc., their oldest T-shirt brand. And as far as the two partners are concerned, all of their products prove that what
hasn’t been done yet doesn’t mean it can’t be done.
Dobles recalls: “The idea for Spoofs came to us in
1990 on the eve of the deadline for our business plan
and concept paper in Entrepreneurial Management at
the Ateneo de Manila University. There were six of us
then and we had reached the ‘what if?’ scenario. As it
happened, we played with the Polo brand icon by changing it to Bolo and adding the farmer-and-carabao figure to
further give the T-shirt a Filipino twist. What we didn’t
know, of course, was if the idea would sell.”
Marcelo explains that their group leaned in the direction of T-shirts for their school project because when the
members were pooling their resources, it turned out that
one of them had an aunt who was into T-shirt manufacturing. “That gave us an edge we could tap into,” he says.
But the group’s concept paper got only a grade of “C,”
the lowest given that term to Dobles and Marcelo’s class.
That low grade became a challenge for the group: they
believed in their idea and they wanted to see how far they
could push it forward. “Would you wear it?’ we were asked,
and we said we certainly would,” recalls Dobles.
During the second school term, each group member
shelled out P3,000 to raise their projected P18,000 startup capital. Dobles and Marcelo say that one could start
a T-shirt business with only P10,000 or less, but their
group came up with a higher startup capital simply because it had six members in all.
Their P18,000 enabled them to produce 400 shirts
carrying the Bolo, United Couples of Banatan, and Timberlang labels. Each cost P65 to produce and they priced
them at P145 each. Only seven shirts were sold on the
first day. At the end of the required 21 selling days, however, a total of 1,200 of the T-shirts were sold and the
group got a grade of “A” for that school term.
After their graduation in 1992, the group members
each pursued traditional career paths. In the case of
Dobles and Marcelo, however, the idea for the novelty Tshirt business just wouldn’t go away and they ultimately
decided to pursue it for real. Recalls Marcelo: “We were
young and that was our window for taking risks. Walang
asawa, walang anak [No wife, no kids]. If there ever was
a time to go into it, it was that time.”
So the two went into production of their Spoofs Tshirts with an initial run of 20,000 to 30,000. They stored
CONTACT DETAILS
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he success of
Spoofs Limited
Inc. lies in great
part to sticking to one’s
strong suit—in this case
the T-shirt business.
At one point, business
partners Charlie Dobles
and Drew Marcelo came
out with merchandise
such as key chains and
mugs carrying the Spoof
labels, but all of them
bombed out.
Their T-shirt business
has given birth to two
other companies in
support of their main
business: Fourth Floor
Apparel, to take care of
the sewing needs, and
Print Wiz Inc., to handle
all printing-related
matters.
the shirts in a basement office, but soon their inventory
couldn’t fit into the space anymore. So they began storing the excess in their houses and cars. The shirts, contrary to their expectations, were not translating into
sales right away.
“Cinderella [a leading fashion retailer] turned us
down,” recalls Dobles. “No one would have us. It was
such a gray area then—and it still is—about whether it
was legal to spoof known brands. No one wanted to be
part of a fallout.”
They got their break only when another leading fashion retailer, Gift Gate, accepted consignments of the
shirts to 21 of its stores. “Cinderella then relented and
accepted us in their stores, too,” says Dobles.
During the next 13 years, Dobles and Marcelo concentrated on the Spooafs business, building its credibility among consumers and coming up with over 300 Tshirt concepts that were all their own. Today, Spoofs has
26 company-owned outlets and three franchised ones.
Its brands under The T-Shirt Project now also include
Branded, Malisya, Shirts for a Cause, Blanko, Volume
One, Sounds Family, and Customized.
According to the partners, two guiding principles have
carried Spoofs to where it is today. Dobles gives the first:
“The best way to test your market is to sell to actual customers.” And Drew gives the second: “When you work
with what you love to do, then it won’t be work.” n
SPOOFS LIMITED INC.
16 Warehouse 1, Evangelista St., Santolan, Pasig City
Telephones: (02) 682-3490; (02) 682-3530 • E-mail: [email protected]
Website: www.thetshirtproject.ph
INNOVATORS
Mark Dulag
He explains that all of the K-yong wines the family produces are organic, healthy wines, so the family is very careful to use only fruits that have not been
sprayed with pesticides. Currently, he mostly distributes them to restaurants and hotels in Baguio City, but
he also has sub-distributors for some establishments in
Manila, Pampanga, and Zambales. “Bacause the number of our outlets is still limited, we are able to assure
them of a continuous supply,” he says.
Now 27, Mark is about to finish his Masters in
Business Administration at Saint Louis University
in Baguio City. He plans to expand the business later by finding interested investors. His objective is to
make K-yong wines more visible on wine shelves and
on wine connoisseurs’ cellars all over the Philippines,
K-yong Spirits
‘We take no shortcuts in
our winemaking’
By Mari-An C. Santos
W
ihen they were still small, Mark
C. Dulag and his six brothers
and sisters would often watch
their mother Emiliana make
wine from rice and from sweet
fruits grown in the family orchard in Tadian, Mountain Province. In 1997, however, their orchard yielded
such a large harvest of lemons, prompting their mother to make wine out of them for the first time. She had
actually intended to make only a little lemon wine,
but she ended up with too much of it even just for the
family’s consumption. Rather than let it go to waste,
the family started selling their lemon wine.
The Dulags found that lemon wine had a market of
its own. With an initial investment of P 5,000, therefore, the family made more lemon wine and Mark started selling it to sari-sari stores and in the Tadian public market. He also sold the wine during fiestas in the
adjoining barangays and in the town proper. Eventually, people started coming to their house to buy the
lemon wine.
While pursuing an accounting degree in 1998,
Mark started to seriously consider making a business
out of their family’s lemon winemaking craft. “Initially, we just called the product ‘Lemon Wine’,” he recalls. “Eventually, however, a cousin of mine thought
that we should give it a brand name and he suggested
‘K-yong’, my nickname.”
Over the next four years, the Dulags experimented and innovated on their lemon wine and on its production process. In theory, Mark says, this resulted in
lots of unsold products that he estimates at P10,000.
“But they were not wasted because we used them for
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K
-yong Spirits
about the wine business.
now makes a
He says he had read
wide array of
about Don Roberto’s
wines from strawberry,
wines in that issue—a
pineapple, tamarillo
reading that prompted
(Spanish tomato), sorrel,
him to acquire more
guava, cherry, orange,
winemaking know-how
persimmon, mango,
on top of his native
duhat, and passion
winemaking skills. “I was
fruit. Most of these
in Cavite when I came
fruits are grown in the
across that article, so
family orchard of the
even if I wasn’t familiar
Dulags; the rest, like the
with the place, I sought
wildberries, have to be
Don Roberto out in
sourced from neighbors
Imus!” he recalls.
That was the
who pick them from way
up in the mountains.
Mark Dulag credits
family consumption,” he says.
From their rice wine and lemon wine, the family
next experimented on wildberry wine and were able
to perfect the process. Today, these three wines are
K-yong’s mainstays. Rice wine, being a staple in ethnic Ibaloy and Kankanaey celebrations and gatherings, remains the runaway best-seller; in fact, it rarely makes it to the store shelves. “As early as when we
start producing the rice wine, it would already be sold
out by reservation,” Mark says.
Lemon wine,
rice wine and
wildberry
wine are the
mainstays
of K-yong
Spirits; all
their wines
are made from
pesticide-free
fruits, says
MARK DULAG.
CONTACT DETAILS
beginning of a friendship
and mentorship that
ENTREPRENEUR Magazine’s
enabled Dulag to develop
November 2006 for
his winemaking business
expanding his knowledge
to what it is today.
then eventually all over the world.
“I need investors so we can put up a bigger fermentation area, buy more raw materials, and get equipment like those winemaking barrels they use abroad,”
he says.
Today, however, many fruit-wine brands have begun to flood the market, drawing the K-yong wines
into a price war. Mark is confident of the quality of Kyong wines, though, and he says that he continues to
get repeat orders for them.
“You can see it in the clarity of the liquid and you
can feel it,” he explains. “You’ll know it’s K-yong ‘pag di
nangangasim ’yung tiyan mo [when your stomach doesn’t
turn sour] after you drink it. We take no shortcuts in
our winemaking so we can vouch for the quality and
excellence of our wines.” n
K-YONG SPIRITS
Egan, Tadian, Mountain Province • Mobile: 0918-4076879
Website: www.k-yong.net • E-mail: [email protected]
INNOVATORS
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Mario
Elumba
Adventure-One
Scuba Diving Centre
He found the experience
of his first dive so
unbelievably exciting that he
decided to teach diving.
MARIO ELUMBA
says it was
a ‘humbling
decision’ to
become a beach
bum; but, he
adds, he was
too good for the
corporate grind
anyway.
By Jan Vincent S. Ong
I
n the diving community, there’s no bigger kahuna or big gun than scuba-diving entrepreneur Mario S. Elumba. As a former enthusiast who had wanted to emulate the famous
French oceanographer Jacques Costeau, he
took up this sport in the early 1980s by joining the
UP Divers Club. He found the experience of his first
dive at Anilao Beach in Batangas so unbelievably exciting that he decided to teach diving to UP students
on weekends. And as a mechanical engineer working
in the corporate world during the next six years, his
attachment to the sea grew to a point that he no longer pursued the profession he had studied for.
After a working stint at an American company,
Elumba couldn’t immediately find another job. This
prompted him to open a dive shop on Katipunan Avenue in Quezon City, calling it The Dive Spot. He says
it was a humbling decision to become a beach bum,
but he says in retrospect that he was too good for the
corporate grind anyway.
Today, he holds the highest rank in the scuba profession, that of PADI Course Director—PADI stands
for “Professional Association of Diving Instructors”—
and has long been a partner in DiveFirm, a coastal
resource management and training consultancy for
building resorts and dive shops.
S
Elumba runs two scuba diving shops: Adventure
One at the Aquaventure House in San Antonio Village, Makati City, and McDiver in Anilao, Batangas.
He had put them up with partners—they are medical doctors, lawyers, and highly salaried CEOs—who
are his former dive students. Later, with his growing
passion for oceanography, he also put up Splash, an
underwater video and photography equipment store
right beside Adventure One. n
cuba diving
entrepreneur
Mario Elumba
gives some advice
to water-loving
entrepreneurs who would
like to put up swimrelated businesses:
Before jumping into
the water, he says, find
CONTACT DETAILS
the right beach for
your target market in
terms of tourist traffic
and particular places
to go for tours and
specific water-related
activities. For instance,
beaches like Anilao in
Batangas are good for
tourist skin-diving or
snorkeling because they
have friendly shores
with a shallow depth of
about 3.33 meters (10
feet) and have lots of
colorful fishes. On the
other hand, beaches in
the Visayas and in Sulu
are excellent for serious
divers who want to
take scenic underwater
photographs.
He says that for
earning quick cash, the
best largely untapped
business is renting out
snorkels and facemasks
for skin diving. A good
set can be bought for
P1,500 to P2,000; the
best ones, for P10,000 or
thereabouts.
Certified diving
instructors such as PADI
Diving Masters can use
their skills to teach scuba
lessons. The teaching
rate for a certified diving
instructor starts at
P14,000 per student for
five full-day lessons.
ADVENTURE-ONE SCUBA DIVING CENTRE
2/F Aquaventure House, 7805 St. Paul corner Mayapis Street, San Antonio Village, Makati City
Telephone: (02) 899-2831 • Mobile: 0917-8348464; 0922-8348464
E-mail: [email protected] • Websites: www.a1dive.com; www.divefirm.com
INNOVATORS
Sonny Francisco
Ferino’s Bibingka
‘We need to balance novelty
and changing customers’
preferences’
By Jet Ramos-Cruz
A
centuries’ old mainstay of the Philippine
holiday table, bibingka is making a major
comeback in the consumer food market.
Several entrepreneurs have made the
native delicacy commercially available
in major malls and leading food establishments. They
are applying modern food preparation and marketing
techniques to whip up year-round demand for the product and revive the Filipino’s fondness for it.
Spearheading bibingka’s commercial revival is Sonny Francisco, grandson of the late musician Ceferino
Francisco, who in 1938 founded the family-owned enterprise that was to become Ferino’s Bibingka. Sonny,
an architect, inherited his parents’ strong attachment
to the product and carried on with the family business.
Today, he owns and manages all of the Ferino’s Bibingka outlets in Robinsons malls, while his siblings own
and manage the Ferino’s Bibingka outlets at Metroeast
in Pasig City, SM Mall of Asia in Pasay City, Market!
Market! in Taguig City, and Shopwise in Pasig. There
are also franchised Ferino’s Bibingka outlets in Quezon
City and Makati City.
“My grandparents started the business as a small restaurant in Pritil, Tondo, called Ferino’s Café,” Sonny
recalls. “They decided to serve bibingka as their specialty because during that time, a lot of people would ask
for it so often, especially during holidays. The couple
then bought clay pots and the other cooking utensils
for making bibingka. They experimented
Besides
with various rice, egg, and sugar mixes
selling
until they developed what came to be
bibingka in
known as Ferino’s galapong [glutinous
local malls,
rice mix], which to this day remains
SONNY
FRANCISCO the family’s trade secret.”
That unique galapong mixture be(with wife
came
the restaurant’s major attraction,
ANNE) plans
to export
making Ferino’s Café hugely popular
the product through word of mouth. What used to
to Filipino
be a regular delicacy that the Francisco
communities
couple sold to neighbors and friends beabroad.
came the talk of the town. Many major
personalities and politicians of the time became regular customers of the restaurant because of it. So popular did the product become that the Franciscos moved
their restaurant to the Manila Hotel in the late 1960s,
renaming the shop as “Ferino’s Bibingka.”
When Sonny’s grandfather passed away in 1975,
however, Ferino’s Bibingka lost its allure and eventually closed down. It was only in 1982 that Sonny’s father, Alfredo Francisco, revived the business, opening his first Ferino’s Bibingka outlet in Baclaran, Pasay
City, in front of the Redemptorist Church. Later, because the malls had by then become the Filipino’s favorite shopping destination, Sonny’s father brought
the business to the SM Centerpoint, SM Megamall,
SM North Edsa and SM Southmall.
He invested about P200,000 for stall rentals at the
SM malls and another P100,000 for putting up a takeout counter along Makati Avenue in Makati. Because
his outlets had such good locations and bibingka had by
then become popular even to the upscale market, he
recovered his investment in less than a year.
A major concern of Sonny Francisco in running the
business he had inherited is to continuously improve
product and customer service without losing the core
concept of bibingka as a native delicacy. “We need to
balance novelty and the changing customers’ preferences,” he says. “Also, there are limitations in the manner we can prepare our product in the different locations where we do our business, so we have to consider
those limitations in the cooking process.”
For example, he explains, the traditional way of
making bibingka is to cook it on a cooking pan with hot
coal placed both on top and underneath the pan. But
since most food establishments have stringent safety
regulations and customers are always in a hurry, Ferino’s Bibingka is often constrained to use electric ovens
instead of charcoal embers to cook the product.
“For safety’s sake, we have to use electric ovens
particularly in supermarkets that have low ceilings
and are thus unfit for charcoal cooking,” he explains.
“Wherever possible, however, we use the basic cooking elements like clay pots and charcoal in cooking
our bibingka.”
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B
esides selling
bibingka in local
malls, Sonny
Francisco of Ferino’s
Bibingka plans to export
the product to Filipino
communities abroad.
For this purpose, he
had arranged for the
Department of Science
and Technology
(DOST) to test the
shelf life of his sealed
frozen bibingka. It was
determined that the
product could last for at
least a year, therefore
making it viable for
export.
Another major
initiative taken by
Francisco is franchising
Ferino’s Bibingka in
food carts that serve
the product in a smaller
size. The variant is
called “Bibingcute
by Ferino’s,” a more
affordable bibingka but
with precisely the same
taste and texture as the
regular-size product.
“With a minimum
of only P150,000, you
can get started in the
franchised bibingka
food cart business,” he
says. ”The cart comes
complete with all the
necessary equipment
and supplies, and if you
have a good location for
your food cart, you could
recover your investment
in as short a time as 12
months.”
Proving that they can overcome obstacles like this,
however, Sonny and the Franciscos have now revitalized the bibingka and made it even more widely available to the Filipino consumer. n
SONNY FRANCISCO
FERINO’S BIBINGKA, Filinvest East Homes, Cainta, Rizal
Mobile: 0917-8313477
INNOVATORS
Freddy
Gonzalez
Aloha Board Sports
‘Our goal is to
call attention to the country
as a surfing destination’
S
urfing began simply as a hobby for Freddy Gonzalez, but it helped him build a
successful business venture that became
the basis for a promising Philippine tourism project. A surfing and skateboarding
enthusiast a long time back, he had actually given up
the hobby somewhere along the way. In 2005, however, while visiting his sister in Hawaii, he got himself hooked on surfing again. “But when I came back
to the Philippines, I couldn’t find surfing equipment
that I could use,” he recalls.
That gave him the idea of putting up a surfboard
distributorship in the country. With an initial capital
of US$6,000 from his own pocket, Gonzalez established Aloha Board Sports Inc. in February 2006, initially distributing two surfboard brands, Southpoint
for enthusiasts and New Surf Project (NSP) for beginners. His timing was just right because at precisely that time, a lot of people in Manila wanted to take
up surfing. “The surfboards got sold out from right out
of our warehouse,” he says.
Gonzalez, now 30, put up his surfboard distributorship even as he and his wife Anne were already
running Terry S.A. Inc., the exclusive distributor in
the Philippines of Havaianas footwear and David &
Goliath merchandise. He says that the strong initial
sales of his surfboards was largely generated by a posting he had made at the NSP website and by referrals
including Lost Enterprises, Dakine, Sector 9, Global Surf Industries, and Volcom. “Aloha
Board Sports couldn’t survive
on surfboards and accessories
alone,” he explains.
In March 2008, it opened
at the Rockwell Power Plant
mall. Another concept store is
set to open in the Fort Bonifacio area. Gonzalez says they’re
still looking at other prime mall
locations, as well as penetrating markets in Cebu, Baguio, and Davao.
Gonzalez is optimistic about the company’s prospects due to the continuing growth of the surfing community and surfing’s greater accessibility to those who
want to take up the sport. “Every weekend, surfing
schools have at least 15 new students learning how to
surf,” he says. “In Metro Manila alone, there are now
about 4,000 hard-core, casual, and beginning surfers,
and altogether there are now 10,000 of them all over
the country.”
Primarily for this reason, he says, sales of the
surfboards and skateboards carried by Aloha Board
Sports increased by 50 percent in 2007 compared to
that in 2006.
But it is not only pushing surfboard sales that Gonzalez has busied himself with since putting up his surfboard distributorship. He has come up with a program
called Onboard Philippines which, in partnership
with the Department of Tourism, aims to tap in a big
way the potential of surfing tourism in the country,
the coastline of which is twice as long as that of the
United States.
He explains: “Our goal is to call international attention to the Philippines as a prime surfing destination. There are 20 million surfers around the world
looking for new destinations and undiscovered waves.
By tapping the tourist market and the surfing community in general, we can help bring prosperity to many
local communities.”
Gonzalez cites La Union as an example: “Ten years
FREDDY
GONZALEZ
sees continuing
growth of the
Philippine
surfing
community
due to greater
accessibility
for those who
want to take up
the sport.
from his friends in the surfing community. NSP surfboards and skateboards are also being sold at specialty surf shops in the country.
In 2007, Aloha Board Sports expanded its merchandise offerings to also cover clothing lines associated with the surfing and skating fashion culture,
CONTACT DETAILS
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hrough the
engagement with OBP
initiative
is still very recent,
of Freddy
I am confident that
Gonzalez’s Onboard
through the resources
Philippines (OBP),
of Onboard Philippines
good but little known
and the Aloha Board
potential surfing places
Sports team, Lanuza
like Lanuza in Surigao
and the province of
del Sur, have been
Surigao del Sur would
brought to national
soon become well-
attention. Says Dr.
known not only as
Algerico “Geri” Irizari,
a potential tourism
M.D., the mayor of
destination but also as
Lanuza: “Although our
a surf haven.”
ago, it had only four resorts; now there are around 10 to
12, with the surfing schools there taking in every weekend
about 20 to 70 people who want to learn to surf.”
Onboard Philippines aims not only to popularize
surfing and the Philippines as a prime destination, but
also to raise public awareness about the need to take
care of these places for future generations.
Gonzalez intends to continue coordinating with
local governments to push the Onboard Philippines
tourism campaign and monitor its progress. He is particularly eyeing the development of Samar, Batanes,
and Pagudpod in Ilocos Norte as the country’s next
surfing destinations. n
ALOHA BOARD SPORTS INC.
AFP-RSBS Compound, Km. 12, East Service Road, Taguig City
Telephone: (02) 837-0118 • Website: www.alohaboardsports.com
INNOVATORS
Vincent Grey
Ventaja
International
This entrepreneur keeps
in mind the ironies of rapid
growth to bring his
business up the next level
By Dave Llorito
T
he fast-growing telecommunications
industry offers many profitable business opportunities, but entrepreneurs
should beware that it could have many
pitfalls as well.
This warning comes from Vincent Grey, president
and founder of Ventaja International Corp., which
sells universal mobile phone cards and online payment systems to overseas Filipino workers. If an entrepreneur doesn’t innovate, he explains, growth could
actually kill, for it greatly attracts the big guns in the
competition, pushing down margins and easing out
the smaller ones.
But Grey says that Ventaja now has the momentum
to hurdle those pitfalls and make it big. He explains:
“Over the years, Ventaja has established a presence in
cities with large concentrations of Filipinos. We have
distributors or partners in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Italy, UK, Spain, Switzerland, the Netherlands,
Israel, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, the USA, and Australia. And aside from the various software platforms
that Ventaja uses to deliver prepaid load overseas, it
has expanded its product line to include remittances—Smart Padala and Globe GCash—and collections,
particularly SSS contributions.”
Nevertheless, Grey keeps in mind the bitter lesson
he learned from the ironies of rapid growth when, to
bring his business up the next level, he started selling
PLDT phone cards 10 years ago.
In 1997, Grey bought PLDT phone cards in bulk,
shipped them to various cities all over the Philippines, then distributed them at street level through a
nationwide network of retailers and distributors. Business was brisk, so Grey’s company, Advantage Products Corp. (APC), even brought in machines from
abroad to dispense the prepaid cards.
Up until early 2000, business was sweet and good,
growing at more than 50 percent a year. But smelling
huge profits, the big retailers joined the fray, buying
prepaid cards from the telecommunication companies
in huge volumes and selling them at tiny profit margins. That really hurt APC.
Also, moving around physical cards was practically the same as moving cash, so APC experienced
the added headache of massive losses through pilferage and theft. The solution? Why not distribute those
cards electronically? Grey did just that by outfitting the
convenience stores with personal computers linked to
APC’s main server, which would then print out personal identification numbers (PINs) for those who buy
mobile phone credits or “loads.”
Then, by 2003, came another blow to APC: Smart
Communications innovated on cellular phone reloading by introducing the mobile-to-mobile phone reloading or pasa load. This made APC’s systems obsolete.
Still another blow came that same year: a leading
telco suspended APC’s phone card distribution rights
for two weeks for some “apparent violations” in the
distribution agreement.
With not much else to do, Grey sent Lynne Cabreros, the company’s marketing
If an
director, to Singapore to figure
entrepreneur
out if it was possible to sell cards
doesn’t
to OFWs there. The results were
innovate,
positive, so by end-2003, Grey put
growth could
up another company, Ventaja, to
actually kill
solely sell mobile phone cards to
the business
because
OFWs. APC then became simply
it attracts
a holding company.
the ‘big
One of Ventaja’s recent innoguns’ in the
vations is a SIM card that allows
competition,
families of OFWs to send text messays VINCENT
sages abroad cheaply. Explains CaGREY.
breros: “This card is designed to
make family members of OFWs save on the cost of
text messages. If I’m a nurse in London and my son
sends a text message, for instance, it would cost him
about P20. If I have a roaming SIM card, the cost for
my son to send a text from the Philippines would be
only one peso.”
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ecause of
the rapid
developments in
telecommunications, a
player in the industry
needs to innovate a
lot. The experience of
Ventaja International’s
Vincent Grey has
shown that with
innovation, one can
ride the wave—even if
one falls sometimes—
survive, and still make
profits along the way.
But one must recognize
when one has hit the
trough, one must
modify or even change
the product or service
to keep the business
viable and competitive.
Still, Grey refuses to consider his company successful. “We are in a better position today than we were
in 2003,” he simply says. “My expectation is that in a
year or two, we are going to be successful. I think we
now have the foundation for making Ventaja a successful business, because I have taken one further step:
we are now issuing our own cards. We have come full
circle, back to where I started.” n
VENTAJA INTERNATIONAL CORP.
Unit 11E IBM Building, Eastwood City Cyber Park, 188 E. Rodriguez Jr. Avenue, Bagumbayan, Quezon City 1110
Telephone: (02) 995-8908
Fax: (02) 995-8921 • Website: www.ventaja.com.ph
INNOVATORS
it’s best to make private placements to finance
our expansion at least for the next few years,”
Gurango said.
The company had earlier increased its client
base by 400 percent by buying Absalom Systems, a
HR-solutions software developer with operations
in Singapore, Australia and South Africa.
Gurango, who had built his company from the
ground up, says that adopting a global strategy for
the software development business is crucial to
ensuring its continued growth. “If a software company is not poised to take its products and services to the global market, if its focus is primarily on the local market, then I would question its
long-term viability,” he explains.
The primary target markets of GSC are software companies that are currently developing
their intellectual property (IP) and human resources (HR) assets. These markets assure the
GSC a steady flow of income from software licensing fees over an extended period of time.
The potential for repeat business is also greater because as a client company’s requirements
evolve, the software solutions it will require will
be changing as well.
“IP assets have longer and more profitable lifecycles than HR assets, so the market valuation of
an IP-based business is several times higher than
that of a service-based business with the same revenue and profitability levels,” Gurango says.
Software companies are essentially technologybased ventures that generally have no tangible assets to speak of, their products being largely in the
form of stored or online digital information. For
this reason, Gurango explains, determining a software company’s current value and the funds needed to achieve a certain target growth level requires
considerable effort in financial forecasting.
“But I have a simple rule-of-thumb for this,”
he says. “Based on your business plan and financial forecasts, determine how much money you
will need to grow your startup company to a cashflow positive level, then double that amount to
Joey
Gurango
Gurango Software
A software company should
be ‘poised to take its
products and services to the
global market’
By Rafael Santos
T
Photo by At Maculangan
oday, the global demand for technology solutions is as strong as ever,
and a Philippine-based software development firm, Gurango Software
Corp. (GSC), is one of the rising
stars in this market. Through its overseas network
of branches and affiliates, the company provides
back-office product development and customer
services for front-office sales and support companies in Asia, Australia, Africa, the Middle East,
Western Europe, and North America.
Joey Gurango, the Filipino founder and CEO
of GSC, says that the company derives the bulk
of its income from license fees for the proprietary
software that it develops for its foreign clients. In
2007, it made $2 million (about P94 million) in
total revenues, exceeding its targets for that year
and representing a fourfold increase from that of
the previous year. However, Gurango says that
the domestic market is rather small, so GSC has
gone global as the next logical step.
To fund its overseas expansion program, GSC
announced in early 2007 that it was raising P300
million by listing roughly 30 percent of its outstanding capital stock, but decided to delay the
offer to 2010 due to unfavorable market conditions. “The IPO is not going to sell. So we think
JOEY GURANGO, who built his company from
the ground up, says adopting a global strategy
ensured its continued growth.
CONTACT DETAILS
I
n
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s it your first time
should also provide a
to invest in tech?
list of your clients and
Joey Gurango
the services you have
of Gurango Software
provided them.
Corp. says a start-up
A talented software
software company
team. For a highly
would need the
labor-intensive
following:
business like software
An identity. What
development, the value
solutions or services
of a top-notch team
are you providing?
is crucial for success.
Your basis for coming
Gurango says GCS
up with your business
has a big advantage
identity will largely
because the Philippines
be your competencies
has many excellent
as a prospective
quality software
software development
developers.
entrepreneur.
The hardware and
A website. Internet
software. High-
visibility will be critical
capacity computers,
for an IT business, so
licensed software
you need to develop
tools, and a high-speed
a website to catalog
Internet connection will
the various services
be the lifeline of your
you are providing. It
business.
brace you for contingencies and other unforeseen expenses. That is how much in capital investments you should try to raise.”
Gurango says that in addition to profitability,
he uses two other measures to keep track of his
company’s performance: “I measure annual revenues per employee (RPE) and annual revenues per
customer (RPC). The RPE and RPC will measure
the efficiency of a software company and its potential for scalability. The higher these ratios, the
better chance the company will have to continue
growing profitably at a faster rate.” n
GURANGO SOFTWARE CORP.
Philippine O�ce: 2F Topy’s Place Industria St, Libis, Quezon City, Philppines
Telephone: (02) 637-0928 • Fax: (02) 636-3800 • E-mail: [email protected]
INNOVATORS
Paul Huang
Fire Lake Grill
‘You have to be realistic. Your
lifestyle will have to change’
n
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I
t could be unsettling to retire at a young age, but
for former corporate executive Paul L. Huang,
he took it as an opportunity to embark on a
lifelong passion.
Now the owner and chef of Fire Lake Grill
in Tagaytay City, Huang had just stepped into his 40s
when he decided to retire from Pepsi-Cola International (PCI) as a top marketing executive. In the late
1990s and early 2000s, the local Pepsi bottler, PepsiCola Products Philippines Inc. (PCPPI), had been undergoing major financial difficulties, and the PCI came
to its rescue by converting debt for equity in its local
franchisee.
Huang opted for early retirement when PCI took a
more active role in PCPPI, transferring to the local franchise the marketing functions that he used to handle. He
thus opted for early retirement instead of accepting the
drastic pay cut that resulted because of that transfer.
The affable Huang, now 47, has been reaping the
fruits of what he describes as his “tranquil” life in Tagaytay for over three years now. At the same time, it
has given him the opportunity to really live his passion—cooking. In March 2005, he put up Fire Lake
Grill in the highly popular tourist strip. A cozy 70-seater steak house with an unimpeded view of Taal Lake,
it is one of only two or three niche restaurants in the
area that target upscale weekend vacationers coming
largely from Metro Manila.
Having to retire so early in his corporate career at
first put Huang in a quandary. He remembers thinking
then: “41 is too young. What am I going to do with my
life?” He soon realized that he only had two choices—
to get another job elsewhere in the corporate world,
or to strike it out on his own.
Upon the suggestion of his wife, Odette, he joined
the twice-weekly course on cookPAUL HUANG
ing essentials of the Heny Sison
has opted to
Culinary School in Quezon City.
regularize his
He found himself training in that
employees,
school for two years, after which
convinced
he ended up being named its “most
that not
promising chef.”
making them
While in cooking school, he met
‘contractuals’
leads to
Ariel Manuel, chef and proprietor
greater sta�
of the Manila restaurant Lolo Dad’s.
productivity.
Manuel encouraged him to train
P
further in a hotel. Huang took the advice and later
asked Norbert Gandler, who was then Mandarin Oriental Manila’s executive chef, if it was possible for him to
work and train in the hotel’s kitchens. Gandler agreed
because he knew Huang personally, the latter’s wife having worked at the Mandarin sometime before.
He worked in the hotel’s various kitchens for two
years without pay. “Working at the Mandarin was a
good learning experience, for it allowed me to start
from the bottom up,” he says.
Huang runs a really tight ship with his restaurant.
Initially, Fire Lake Grill had a staff of 14, but realizing
that he could do with less, he had since cut it down to
nine—among those whom he retained were his four
kitchen assistants. All of the restaurant staff are based
in Tagaytay City.
Contrary to prevailing business practice, Huang has
CONTACT DETAILS
aul Huang has
investors in Fire
Lake Grill but he
is the majority owner.
He says that being
one’s own boss is great
because it allows you to
do what you want, and
you can set the direction
for the business all by
yourself.
But he admits that it
also has its drawbacks:
“I also own all of
the problems of the
restaurant.” It would
be nice, he says, if he
had a business partner
he could share these
problems with.
Huang emphasizes
that to start a business,
one must be ready to
do some self-sacrifice
and accept a lifestyle
change. He explains:
“When you enter into
entrepreneurship, you
have to be realistic. Your
lifestyle will have to
change.” For instance,
he says, while before
he used to have onethousand-peso haircuts,
he now has his hair cut
by the corner barbero
(barber).
He adds wryly: “You
can’t keep comparing
yourself to other
people. So when I see
my contemporaries in
their new cars, OK lang
[that’s OK]. Look, I tell
myself, they don’t have
this restaurant. They are
not responsible for the
livelihood of so many
people as I am with my
restaurant staff.”
opted to regularize his employees instead of maintaining them on a contractual basis. He is convinced that
doing it this way leads to greater staff productivity. He
attributes his wanting to do right by his staff to his Jesuit education, having gone to both Xavier School and
the Ateneo de Manila University.
Huang expects to recover his investment in Fire
Lake in about five years’ time. Since going into the business, though, he has already been reaping great psychic
rewards from it—recognition, developers knocking at
his door, a loyal staff, a satisfied clientele, and most of
all, the chance to live his passion. These are rewards
that he says had been hard to come by in the corporate world. n
FIRE LAKE GRILL
Unit 3 Cli�house Tagaytay, Aguinaldo Highway, Tagaytay City, Cavite
Fax: (046) 413-2069 • E-mail: fi[email protected] • Website: www.firelakegirll.com
INNOVATORS
ARIEL JERSEY
and his team
used guerilla
marketing
to penetrate
their target
markets,
convincing
gasoline
stations to
carry EZ maps
as a standard
o�ering.
Ariel Jersey
EZ Maps
Getting lost in Metro Manila’s
streets leads to a
bright business idea
By Cecilia C. Gonzalez
A
fter getting lost driving in Makati City’s
streets sometime in 1994, Ariel Jersey
came up with this business idea: create
detailed city street maps for both local
motorists and tourists alike. “I thought
of it because of all the one-way streets and all of the
changes in the names of Makati’s street names,” Jersey
recalls. “They were so confusing that I had actually been
lost in Makati many times before that.”
The business he put up to address the problem was
United Tourist Promotions, which started publishing
what were to become the internationally known EZ
Maps in 1995. Today, these maps and the company’s
various other publications are widely available nationwide, with a strong presence in gasoline stations and
convenience stores, and bookstores and in the retail
outlets of malls, hotels, airports, and seaports.
EZ maps are designed for people traveling in the
Philippines, particularly motorists, who need specific
directions for finding key streets and major establishments in the country’s top destinations. Much more
comprehensive than other maps available in the market, the maps give more specific details about streets
in major cities as well as useful information for contacting local authorities.
The company also produces specialty maps that
indicate the major festivals held in particular points
in the country and show the country’s major historical and religious sites.
The maps use colors that are easier on the eye, such
as light green and light yellow, and avoid intricate fonts
for greater readability. “And I don’t put any extraneous details like unnecessary shadows and colors on the
maps,” Jersey says.
EZ Maps are updated much more often than other
maps. “I originally intended to update them once every two years, but since I’ve been doing reruns every
year anyway, I have been updating them even more frequently than planned,” Jersey says.
Jersey’s Angeles City-based company now also publishes various easy-to-read and up-to-date travel publications such as road atlases, travel guides, and city
guides. To come up with all of these products, his company’s team has to coordinate closely with the various
government agencies, traffic bureaus, and local authorities to create accurate maps and travel brochures. He
says it is not an easy task because of the sheer number
of government agencies they had to deal with.
Jersey, who hails from Sorsogon, finished his secondary education at the Estenias Science Foundation School
in that province. He then moved to Angeles City in 1986
and landed his first job there as a laborer with the William Golangco Construction Corp. Later, he worked as a
gun club instructor and recreation assistant at the Skeet
and Trap Range in the former Clark Air Base.
He then worked his way through college, graduating
from the Holy Angel University in 1993 with a bachelor’s degree in business administration. He eventually became the manager of the Clark Skeet and Trap
CONTACT DETAILS
n
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A
riel Jersey of
United Tourist
Promotions
made his maps available
nationwide in the two
places motorists most
often frequent: gasoline
stations and convenience
stores. These places
also have the added
advantage of being open
24 hours every day.
“The important thing
in the map business is
to know your market,
and the best strategy is
to make your products
visible everywhere in
that market,” he explains
his marketing strategy.
Jersey and his
original four-man team
then used guerilla
marketing to penetrate
their target markets,
approaching the major
gasoline stations one by
one to convince them
to carry EZ maps as a
standard offering.
Range. In this capacity, he helped train the Philippine
national shooting team for the 1991 Southeast Asian
Games, during which the team captured the gold medals in the individual and team events.
But the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in 1991 displaced
him from his job at Clark, and soon the American forces there moved out of the Philippines for good. He then
decided to study in various computer schools—at STI,
Systems Plus, and Adtech—to become a computer programmer, graphic artist, and systems analyst.
He later volunteered for the Rudolf Steiger Foundation, which undertakes mass-based sports programs,
then got employed as a production research assistant and
systems analyst by a shoe manufacturer, the Intelligent
Manufacturing Company Inc. While working with this
company, he got transferred to Manila, where he eventually decided to put up his map company.
Jersey says he has a simple success formula: “You
have to be in a business that you are truly passionate
about. That is the secret.” n
UNITED TOURIST PROMOTIONS
16-14 Marlim Avenue corner Don Juan Street, Diamond Subdivision, Balibago, Angeles City
Telephone: (045) 322-8767 • Telefax: (045) 625-7708
INNOVATORS
Francisco
Licuanan III
Geo Estate
Development
‘You don’t have third parties
telling you that you have to
maximize profits’
By Maria Operario
F
rancisco H. Licuanan III has come full
circle. The 64-year-old Ateneo and Harvard graduate recalls how, in the early
days of his storied 40-year career at Ayala Land Inc. (ALI), he was very much
involved in the finer details of running a real estate
company, talking to contractors, architects, engineers,
and bankers.
He’s at it again, this time as the head of Geo Estate
Development Corp., which was formed in April 2007
by his former colleagues and investors—all committed
to make a major mark in the real estate industry. Geo
Estate’s first project is The Beacon, a 44-story upscale
residential condominium at the corner of Arnaiz and
Chino Roces avenues in Makati City.
Licuanan, who retired in July 2004 as president of
Ayala Land, is actually new at being an entrepreneur.
He has spent most of his life working for somebody
else, including being a consultant from late 2005 to
July 2007, but he is now getting the hang of working
for himself and is finding it a refreshing change.
Since Geo Estate is still small, Licuanan says he
tends to share duties as chairman and CEO with his
partner Manuel J. Colayco Jr., the firm’s president
and chief operating officer. Colayco was formerly the
chief of Laguna Properties Holdings Inc. (now Avida Land).
ry responsibility for finding
new projects and for negotiating acquisitions and joint
ventures.
This time, though, he also
has to contend with the reality that he doesn’t have as
much capital at his disposal
compared to the time when he was with the formidable Ayala group. His margin for error is therefore
more limited, he says, so he must make sure that every project is a success.
But a definite plus for Licuanan this time is his being much closer to the action. “You don’t have layers
of bureaucracy between you and the marketplace,” he
explains. “You can focus more on the actual business.
In essence, you are more of a ‘doer’ and less of an administrator. But I actually prefer this because I have
always been a doer. I enjoy doing things.”
Unlike before when he had to deal with other people’s money, Licuanan says, he can actually take more
risks now as an entrepreneur. He explains: “You can
decide to give a better product even if it means making less money because you don’t have third parties
telling you that you have to maximize profits.”
But he cautions those with no real estate background against rushing headlong into the market simply to take advantage of the sector’s growth. He says
there is so much more to real estate than just moving
earth and pouring concrete.
Licuanan explains that the industry is intrinsically
cyclical and volatile, especially in developing countries
like the Philippines: “Even among developing countries, we are more volatile than most of our neighbors
because of our political environment and our inability
to maintain a consistent policy framework.”
He says that despite these inherent risks, there are
many areas for growth in the country where upstart
companies like Geo Estate can get into the action. “For
small to medium-scale entrepreneurs,” he says, “what
matters is not so much the state of the industry as a
whole but the demand and competitive situation for a
particular product in a particular location.” n
A newcomer at
entrepreneurship,
FRANCISCO
LICUANAN III says
he tends to share
Geo Estate’s duties
with his partner,
Manuel Colayco Jr.
“In practice, we tend to focus on different things
because of our different backgrounds,” Licuanan explains. “Manny, being a marketing man, focuses on
the marketing and sales aspect. He also handles the
day-to-day administrative matters. My involvement
in marketing and sales is more at the overall level—
pricing, sales policy, copy strategy for advertising and
promotions, and choice of people.”
In addition, Licuanan takes care of product design,
construction matters, and finance. He also has prima-
CONTACT DETAILS
F
n
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rancisco
Licuanan III
of Geo Estate
gives this advice to
real-estate developers:
“Don’t get too
emotionally attached
to your project. Make
sure you look at it in
a very hard-nosed,
unemotional way.
And don’t just look
at its merits. Look at
it relative to other
projects. Competition is
a fact of life. You may
have a good project,
but is there a better
one right down the
road? And if it isn’t
there yet, could one
suddenly appear soon?”
And for property
buyers, he has this
advice: “Look for good
locations and wellbuilt products. Don’t
just look for bargains,
for they may not be
bargains in the long
run. In boom times,
the gap between the
good and the mediocre
products tends to
narrow. But when the
boom ends, there will
always be a market—a
rental or sale market—
for the better products,
but the market for
inferior products dries
up completely.”
GEO ESTATE DEVELOPMENT CORP.
Address: 14th floor, JAKA Building, 6780 Ayala Ave., Makati City
Telephone: (02) 856-2831 • Fax: (02) 856-2832
INNOVATORS
Edmun Liu
Basic Graphics
‘We wanted to be a printing
company that was on a par
with those in Hong Kong and
Singapore’
W
hen Visayas-based businessmen needed good-quality marketing collaterals 12 years ago,
they had to go to Manila and
even to Hong Kong or Singapore to have the job done. There just were no local
printers good enough to do it, and the region’s printing industry itself had been stagnating due to lack of
competition.
Edmun Liu’s family got so frustrated with this situation because it was running a thriving clothing business. His elder brother Bernie—creator of the popular apparel brands Penshoppe, Oxygen, ForMe, and
Memo—needed a lot of high-quality collaterals to support the brands and was getting them from a compa-
ny the Lius also owned. In time, however, that company could no longer meet the ever-growing demand
for the collaterals. It was at this point that the family decided to put up their own printing company, one
that could serve not only their needs but those of other companies as well. Thus, in 1996, Basic Graphics
Inc. (BGI) was born.
The Lius had put Edmun in charge of forming BGI,
and the young accountant immediately got the family’s consensus of not settling for a run-of-the-mill
printing service. “We wanted to be a printing company that was on a par with those in Hong Kong and
Singapore,” he recalls.
To achieve this goal, the family invested in top-ofthe-line equipment, making BGI the first printing company in Cebu to acquire computer-to-plate technology. It was expensive, but it produced superior-quality
printed jobs faster and more efficiently than traditional printing equipment. The ambitiousness of the enterprise, however, made Cebu’s existing printers skeptical
about it. “People really thought we would go out of business in no time at all,” Liu says, chuckling.
During its first few years, BaEDMUN LIU got
sic Graphics only serviced the
the consensus
Lius’ apparel company, Golden
of his family to
ABC Inc., but word eventually
put up a printing
got around to both Visayas- and
company with
Mindanao-based businessmen
top-of-the line,
that there was now a printalbeit expensive,
computer-toer in Cebu capable of highplate equipment.
quality production. BGI’s roster of clients grew quickly after
that, making BGI an industry leader and the undisputed premier printing solutions provider in the VisMin area.
Today, BGI’s sister company Golden ABC, now
accounts for only a small part of its sales; the bulk of
BGI’s business now comes from five-star hotels, major resorts, jewelry exporters, and furniture makers.
On any given month, the company handles 150 to
200 printing projects simultaneously, with each order
averaging 100,000 units. “We make everything from
brochures to packaging materials for jewelry and fur-
CONTACT DETAILS
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A
side from the
excellence of
its printing,
Basic Graphics Inc. has
an excellent reputation
for taking care of its
118-strong employees.
The benefits it
provides its workforce
are on a par with those
of large multinational
companies. Among
them are scholarship
programs and
generous performance
and sales incentives
for its employees.
The company also
maintains the following
facilities for them:
a fully equipped inhouse fitness center
at its main office,
an auditorium that
converts into a chapel,
and a clinic that
retains a company
doctor who provides
free annual medical
checkups.
Because of all
these perks, Edmun
Liu says, its employees
have rewarded the
company tenfold in
terms of performance
and dedication. “Fifty
percent of my staff has
been with us since we
started,” he says.
niture companies,” Liu says.
Basic Graphics has attracted many more clients
despite a pricing twice higher than those of its competitors in the region. “We may not be the cheapest,
but in terms of quality and service we are the best in
the Visayas and Mindanao,” Liu says with pride. “Our
designers have been trained in marketing so they are
capable of creating materials that really sell. Also, we
keep our printing equipment well-maintained and continually upgraded to ensure the flawless execution of
our printing jobs.”
No longer disparaged as an overly ambitious upstart, BGI enjoys well-deserved and respect in the
printing industry today. In fact, it has received awards
for print excellence four times from the Printing Industry Association of the Philippines, winning in one
of the ten awards categories in 2001, 2002, 2005, and
2006. “We are the first and so far the only printing
company outside of Luzon to have won this award,”
Liu says. n
BASIC GRAPHICS INC.
880 A.S Fortuna St., Mandaue City, Cebu • Telephone: (032) 344-7244
Fax: (032) 346-1297 • Website: www.basic-graphics.com
INNOVATORS
Em Mariano
good at it,” he says. Indeed, by then, his craft collections had already been featured several times in fashion magazines and TV shows.
Even before putting up Business FUNdynamics,
Mariano had already been selling the craft items he
had been making to his call-center officemates. Later, he started posting his craft designs on the Internet,
where they caught the attention of several upscale retailers. They liked the designs and started ordering.
Since then, such upscale fashion boutique brands as
Souk Gallery, Pandango, F&S, Elaisa, Urban&Co., and
Tint have been carrying Mariano’s collections.
It was then that Mariano put up Business FUNdynamics. He explains: “Having beWith a borrowed
come a crafter and accessory delaptop and a
signer as well as a consigner for
DSL connection,
local and international upscale
EM MARIANO
brands, I became more confident
and a friend put
that corporate clients would buy
up Business
FUNdynamics.
our CraftRELAX program. But in
Business
FUNdynamics
‘Arts and crafts was something
I knew I was good at’
By Carl Ng
D
oing it simply as a hobby, Em Mariano started creating fashion accessories in 2005 using only his father’s
pair of pliers and some spring binders
he had taken off from notebooks. Today, that hobby has become a thriving business venture—one that not only gives vent to his talent and
entrepreneurial skills but also allows him to impart
both to other people.
That venture is Business FUNdynamics, an artsand-craft training workshop that also encourages and
teaches learners to put up their own business to supplement their income. The training programs range
from crafting beaded embellishments to designing custom jewelry, and Mariano’s students range from yuppies looking for therapeutic off-work activity to homebased mothers looking for a business sideline.
In addition, Business FUNdynamics conducts what
it calls its CraftRELAX program, which is specifically designed for companies that need to offer their employees something creative and fun to do as a way of
relieving workplace stress.
Mariano, now 25, decided to put up Business FUNdynamics after working for two years as a call center
agent. “I was growing tired of my job,” he recalls. “I
was always trying to apply for a higher position but I
kept on getting rejected. Then the idea finally came
to me—why not make myself my own boss in my own
company?”
So, in December of 2006, with only a borrowed lap-
top and a DSL Internet connection, Mariano and a
friend with a background as corporate trainer put up
Business FUNdynamics. Their vision was to provide
top companies and organizations with unique, funfilled corporate training programs and events. The
partnership was short-lived, however, for Mariano’s
partner left the company only a few months later.
Mariano decided to continue the business on his
own, but this time focusing on arts and crafts training.
“I didn’t have enough capital to start any other business, but arts and crafts was something I knew I was
n
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E
m Mariano
believes that
the Business
FUNdynamics seminars
are popular because
they teach people a
potentially lucrative
sideline business. “In
the crafts business,
with a capital of only
P500 for tools and
materials, you can start
creating and selling
end-products that you
can sell at a markup of
300 to 1,500 percent,”
he says.
Besides training the
students on craftwork
and providing them
with the materials
and tools for learning,
FUNdynamics also
teaches them the
basics of small business
operations.
Mariano explains: “I
teach them how to make
accessories that are
high-class, saleable, and
of export-quality, then
how to make business
out of the craft. One of
our goals is to inspire
our students to be
business-minded, and
our niche objective
is to incorporate fun
and creativity into the
corporate world.”
any case, to counter the thinking of some people that
arts and crafts are just a waste of money, I designed my
modules in such a way that people could really make
a profit from them.”
Business FUNdynamics started by doing a craft
workshop once a month, then made it a twice a month
due to the growing public interest generated by word
of mouth and the program’s Internet exposure. “Now,
just for bead craft alone, we are now holding workshops twice a week,” Mariano says.
To help Mariano handle its current workload, Business FUNdynamics now employs four more trainers
for the different crafts and market segments. Mariano limits participants in a workshop from 10 to 20 individuals so they can get sufficient hands-on training
in the craft of their choice.
“As always, the objective of our seminars is to provide professionals, housewives, and students with a
low-cost but profitable sideline,” he says. n
CONTACT DETAILS
BUSINESS FUNDYNAMICS
Telephone: (02) 717-3014 • Mobile: 0919-4011308
Website: www.cra�pinoy.com
INNOVATORS
Wishcraft
‘One can’t will an enterprise
to grow while standing
on the sidelines’
By Neil Palabrica
I
n 1999, when events companies were still a
dime a dozen, Jun Ongteco and his partners
started Wishcraft with only P20,000 in initial capital. But instead of being buried in the
heap because of its smallness, their company
flourished. Some of its earliest big projects were the
launch in 2000 of what was to become the country’s
biggest circulation magazine, FHM; that magazine’s
equally successful “Win a Date” promo; Rexona’s
“First Day Funk” event; and Cosmopolitan Philippines’ Bachelor Bash.
And to think that Wishcraft started with only 12
people, all of whom had day jobs. “This meant not
being able to give our all to the company because
we had other things to worry about,” Ongteco says.
“Managing a business requires commitment and dedication, and one can’t start an enterprise and just will
it to grow while standing in the sidelines.”
Indeed, six of the original 12 partners dropped out,
unable to keep up with the demands of the business
and of their jobs as well. The six who remained decided to work full time with Wishcraft and grew it
to what it is today.
But as events companies like Wishcraft mushroomed between 2000 and 2001, advertising agencies
that were their main sources of clients started putting
up events management units of their own. Despite
the competition posed by the advertising agencies,
however, the Wishcraft partners pushed on. “We did
so knowing that unlike them, events management
was our specialization and strong suit and not simply
JUN ONGTECO:The business of events
management is built, foremost, on good
relationships with customers.
CONTACT DETAILS
I
f you intend to
go into events
management, Jun
Ongteco of Wishcraft
says you should manage
your finances well to
forestall cash flow
problems in the future.
After that, he
says, diversify: “Your
business has to adapt
to the shifts in market
preferences. In our
case, from being an
events company, we’ve
since branched out
into staging display,
video editing, and
manpower staffing.
Before you diversify, of
course, you must study
first which services
would click with your
market and which
would not.”
Ongteco also
advises that
entrepreneurs should
make sure that they’re
in the business for the
long haul. “Love what
you do,” he says. “If
you go into business
only because you had
no choice, chances are
you won’t succeed.”
courtesy of: wishcra�.com.ph
Jun Ongteco
an add-on service,” Ongteco says.
He says that Wishcraft had a two-fold
way to its success over the past 10 years,
the first being its ability to form good relationships with its customers. “We don’t
take clients for granted. While maintaining our drive to gain new customers, we
work hard at keeping our loyal customers who, after all, account for the bulk of
our sales.”
The second, he says, is being flexible to
the client’s needs and requirements: “We
put in long hours, and we give each project our painstaking attention and care.
Our costs are always based on the client’s
budget, and we assign a project and an account manager to make sure each event is
given proper attention.”
The partners had not allowed success to get into their heads and try to live
as simply as they could. Says Ongteco:
“With what we’re earning, we have not
bought expensive cars but saved our money for the rainy days instead. We prepare
for emergencies by setting aside a certain
amount to at least cover our employees’
salaries because try as we might, we have
not been able to determine our peak and
lean seasons.”
Ongteco says that although Wishcraft
now handles events almost every day, there
is no way of knowing when the dry spell
will come. “This is why we make it a point
to pay our people on time,” he says, “and
we don’t wait until our clients pay us either. We don’t base our payment schedule
on our collections.”
He gives this advice to entrepreneurs
like himself: “Don’t just go after the money. In fact, for two years we had no fixed
salary in Wishcraft. What pushed us to
look for clients was the commission sys-
n
a
c
u
Yo
o
do this,t o
tem we ourselves had instituted. It provides that we’d
earn only from the projects that we have brought into
the company.” n
WISHCRAFT
160 Pasig Blvd., Bagong Ilog, Pasig City • Telephones: (02) 671-6831: (02) 671-672
Fax: (02) 671-2698 • E-mail: jun.ongteco@wishcra�.com.ph • Website: www.wishcra�.com.ph
INNOVATORS
Ark Avilon Zoo.
“Putting up Fun Ranch in this part of Pasig City
has become a ‘win-win’ decision for us,” Padilla says.
“Aside from providing a more accessible alternative amusement area for children, it complements
the businesses of the other establishments in Frontera Verde.”
The Fun Ranch entertainment
Instead of
complex
offers kids and their partaking their
ents
a
wide
range of leisure and
kids to theme
parks outside
amusement facilities: fun rides,
Metro Manila,
childcare and activity centers, and
the Padillas
a zoo. Complemented by a spa,
decided to
a salon, and several retail stores,
put up one in
restaurants, and food shops, Fun
Pasig—right
Ranch is, in fact, a mall by itself.
in the heart of
It has also become a major kiddie
the city.
Vicente
Padilla
Fun Ranch
‘Putting up Fun Ranch in this
part of town has become
a win-win decision for us’
By Roderick L. Abad
S
ome parents—particularly those who are relatively well-off—find it
difficult not to give in
to what their children
want. For this reason, restaurateur Vicente A. Padilla Jr. and his wife Miren
frequently found themselves taking
their children to theme parks and amusement centers outside Metro Manila. But eventually, being an
entrepreneurial-minded couple, they thought of put48 ENTREPRENEUR SPECIAL EDITION
ting one such children’s center right
within Metro Manila itself to spare
parents from traveling too far.
Thus, in December of 2006, they
invested P50 million in initial capital to put up Fun Ranch at Frontera
Verde in Pasig City, where a new shopping, dining, and recreation complex
had grown in recent years. The complex is located
right beside such major commercial establishments
in the area as Tiendesitas, SM Hypermarket, and the
party venue, with over a thousand seats for parties for
all sorts of celebrations.
No entrance fee is required at Fun Ranch because
it is an open-space kiddie play area. “Once you enter, you can ride or play all you want,” Padilla explains. “You are not required to pay to play, and you
can take any of the fun rides anytime and for as long
as you want.”
Fun Ranch makes every effort to make itself a tru-
CONTACT DETAILS
n
a
c
u
Yo
o
do this,t o
T
o sustain
customer
interest in the
entertainment complex,
Vicente and Miren Padilla
have been constantly
striving to improve Fun
Ranch. “We are making
it even bigger and
better by reinvesting in
the business whatever
revenues it generates,”
Vicente explains. “Our
focus is to maintain the
loyalty of our customers
and make them happy,
particularly the children.”
Fun Ranch, which
markets itself largely
through word-of-mouth,
has been getting
favorable online publicity
from satisfied customers.
“For instance, video
clips of parties with the
dance number of our
Fun Ranch mascots have
been posted on YouTube
by one of our clients,” he
says.
ly safe and child-friendly establishment. All the walls
in the activity centers and party venues are padded
with rubber stuffing. Two nurses are always on hand,
one each at the Jumpin’ Jack and at the Active Fun
play areas, and there is also the pediatrician owner of
the Little Lamb’s Spa, Clinic, Salon, which has massage and jacuzzi facilities for children and their families, to help in the event of an emergency.
As a security measure, there are CCTV cameras all over the place, and aside from the regular mall
guards, Fun Ranch assigns a security guard for big
parties that are being celebrated. The place also provides elevators and specialized urinals specifically for
guests with disabilities. “We continuously try to put
everything we could think of to add to people’s convenience,” says Padilla.
Unlike other amusement centers with wild seasonal swings in patronage, Fun Ranch enjoys a steady
weekend stream of young children accompanied by
family members. It also has a regular weekday customer base consisting of the pupils of its in-house
preschool Sea & Learn and of school children taking
class field trips. n
FUN RANCH MEGA DEVELOPMENT INC.
291 P. Guevarra Ave. San Juan, Metro Manila • Telephones: (02) 727-5143; (02) 726-6517
Website: www.funranch.com.ph
INNOVATORS
n
a
c
u
Yo
o
do this,t o
Redentor
Ragojos
‘A
lways finish
jobs on time,”
Redentor
Ragojos, owner of
Ragojos Heritage
Construction Corp.,
says. “Your company
is only as good as the
promises you keep.
You should always be
Ragojos Heritage
Construction
‘Your company is only as good
as the promises you keep’
By Rafael Santos
O
ne of the country’s top interior design
and construction firms, the Ragojos Heritage Construction Corp.
(RHCC) has carved out its own market niche by building swanky office
spaces instead of residential outfits. And because of
the upswing in local construction by high-end service
companies, the company has seen spectacular growth
during the past several years.
The man behind the company’s success is Redentor
“Reggie” Ragojos, 50, an architect and self-made millionaire who confesses that he never really expected to
make it this big. “I started out building ATM booths in
the late 1980s for a local bank,” he recalls. “My first few
years in the business were tough because some clients
didn’t pay me for services I rendered to them. Most of
those clients were residential ones, so I told myself I
would never take residential clients again.”
RHCC’s turf is the highly lucrative but extremely
demanding world of interior outfitting, designing, and
office space construction, and the company’s clientele
consists mostly of multinational banks, embassies,
business process outsourcing (BPO) firms, and other high-end corporate offices. The quick turnaround
times for this business—construction and outfitting
typically takes no more than 30 days—is a primary
reason for RHCC’s brisk growth.
Ragojos Heritage has
thrived in the extremely
demanding world of
interior outfitting,
designing and o�ce space
construction.
“But being in this line of business is very tough, so
not a lot of companies are doing it,” Ragojos says. “It
involves lots of manpower and takes a lot of creativity. You must not only keep an eye on what looks good
but also on what’s practical. And the deadlines in this
industry must be met at all cost. Companies always
want their move-in date to be on the dot because any
delay costs them a lot of money.”
Ragojos emphasizes the value of after-service and
the need to avoid shortcuts in any construction activity. Taking shortcuts is always the easy way out, he says,
but it only provides short-term solutions that usually
result in long-term headaches for either you or the cli-
CONTACT DETAILS
able to meet deadlines
in the construction
world. Also, delivering
everything at cost
puts a premium to
your company, and the
quality of the afterservice you give to your
clients can make or
break your reputation.”
ent. Indeed, allowing yourself to get a bad reputation
in the construction business is suicidal, he says.
“The bulk of our accounts consists of referrals from
satisfied customers,” he explains. “This is why way
back when I was just starting out, I always tried my
best to market the company when playing golf with
my friends and acquaintances. Now, the company literally sells itself. It’s something that gives me genuine satisfaction.”
As a result of his company’s steady stream of projects, Ragojos now can find the time to do missionary
work for a local church organization as a way of giving back to his community. Indeed, he plans to build
a hotel that focuses on spiritual rejuvenation for corporate warriors who have grown weary of the daily
grind of business.
“At this stage, I don’t have to be on-site most of
the time anymore,” he says. “I have full trust in my
people and I let them make decisions in the field without having to get my approval. This gives our company one of its strategic advantages—being able to
make decisions in real time, instead of getting bogged
down by a long chain of command. I’m not afraid to
delegate because I have full faith in the abilities of
my employees.”
Currently, RHCC is staffed by a total of 500 people—architects, foremen, and construction workers.
Its organization is a far cry from the five-man outfit
the company started with in 1988. n
RAGOJOS HERITAGE CONSTRUCTION CORP.
51 Vicente Ave., North Susana Executive Village, Old Balara, Quezon City
Telephones: (02) 951-9765 to 67; (02) 951-2200 • Fax: (02) 951-1985
INNOVATORS
Ricky Sta.Ana
Skinworkz
‘I didn’t let people’s bias
get in the way’
By Icy Luzano
M
ulti-awarded tattoo artist Ricky Sta.
Ana is out to prove that tattoos are
chic and perfectly respectable, not
things that should make people apprehensive. In any case, he has made
designing, sketching, and applying them a sound and
profitable business venture.
Sta. Ana used to do tattoos simply as his favorite pastime. He got into it when he was 20, at which
time he experimented with various inks on improvised tattoo machines that he had made a point to
sanitize. He then talked to bystanders in his neighborhood in Alabang, Muntinlupa City, to give his
tattoos a try, and many of them
‘From the
took up his offer.
start, I
Before long, what was simply a
knew people
pastime
became a good source of
wanted to
income.
He was making a lot of
have tattoos,’
money
in
tips alone, so he decidsays RICKY
STA. ANA.
ed to put up a tattoo studio at the
‘The problem
Cartimar Arcade in Pasay City in
was that they
1990. He called it Skinworkz.
didn’t know
He recalls: “Noong 1990s, ang
where to get
tingin ng tao sa tattoo masama [In the
one that was
1990s, people considered tattoo art
artful and
as in bad taste]. It was really hard to
safe.’
promote having tattoos then, but I
didn’t let that bias against them get in the way.”
With P10,000 in starting capital, Sta. Ana purchased the basic equipment for his one-man operation.
He personally attended to every business detail and
to every customer that walked into his shop. In three
months, he got back his initial investment.
Skinworkz became a household name through the
years. The tattoo studio eventually not only attracted
ordinary people but also rock stars, movie and television personalities, and models in men’s magazines.
One of his regular customers, video jockey Maggie
Wilson, did not even have the slightest goose bump
when she got her tattoo in Sta. Ana’s studio sometime
back. She says: “I know he’s good. His works are really nice. I trust him.”
Foreigners and balikbayan (comebacking locals)
also drop by his shop to have a piece of Filipino culture tattooed on their skin. Even some medical professionals and high-profile politicians are known to
have one of Sta. Ana’s tattoo designs discreetly hidden underneath their white robes and formal suits.
He explains the psychology of tattoowearers: “Simula pa lang, parang gusto na
talaga ng tao ang tattoo, lalo na ’yung mga
nasa middle at high class. Ang problema,
hindi nila alam kung saan ’yung nagta-tattoo ng maganda at safe [From the very
start, I knew that people wanted to have
tattoos, especially those from the middle
and high classes. The problem was that
they didn’t know where to get one that
was artful and safe].”
To address these concerns, Sta. Ana
got his tattoo studio certified by the Department of Health (DOH) and conducted lectures and seminars for budding tattoo
artists on the basics and sanitation aspects
of doing tattoos. Under his initiative, the Philippine
Tattoo Artist Guild (PHILTAG), of which he is currently president, collaborated with the DOH and the
Remedios AIDS Foundation in 1995 to get a book on
tattoo standards published.
Today, Sta. Ana has five guest artists working with
him at Skinworkz. He has put up two working areas in
the studio to accommodate more customers, and he
has replaced his improvised machines with new equipment from the United States.
Besides doing tattoos, Skinworkz also removes and
repairs previously etched but no longer wanted tattoos,
and offers body piercing and cosmetic tattoo (such as
permanent eyebrows and lips).
On June 14 this year, Sta. Ana opened a second
tattoo shop, this time on Timog Avenue in Quezon
City. This way, he says, he can help more tattoo artists get the proper exposure to correct tattoo techniques and practices.
He also makes this fearless forecast: “Hindi magtatagal, ang tattoo shop para na ring beauty parlor, at ang
pagpapa-tattoo, para na lang pagpapagupit [Soon, tattoo
shops will become like beauty parlors, and having tattoos done will be just like having a haircut].” n
CONTACT DETAILS
n
a
c
u
Yo
o
do this,t o
N
ow 18 years
in the tattoo
business, Ricky
Sta. Ana continues
to innovate. He says:
“Dapat nag-aaral
ka ng iba’t-ibang
design para lalo
kang ganahan. Hindi
puwedeng pare-pareho
na lang. [You have
to keep on learning
new designs to keep
your enthusiasm alive
in this art-form. You
simply can’t offer the
same tattoo over and
over.]”
Sta. Ana’s ultimate
goal is to promote
Philippine culture
through the art of
tattooing. His ethnic
and tribal tattoo designs
are among of the most
requested by foreign
customers, and he
wants to offer them as
a major come-on for the
Philippines a primary
destination for people
who want to get tattoos.
SKINWORKZ
Pasilyo D-19, Cartimar Arcade, Pasay City
Telephone: (02) 834-5001 • Mobile: 0905-2222012 • Website: www.skinworkztattoo.com
INNOVATORS
Glenn
Anthony
Soco
Coffee Dream
‘The country is best served by
patronizing our own products’
By Darlyn Ty
W
ihile scouting around for other businesses to complement
his cinema business at Ayala Center-Cebu, Glenn Anthony Soco noticed that the
moviegoers didn’t have a place to hang out before or
after seeing a movie. At that time, Soco was already
toying with the idea of introducing to the Cebuanos
the gourmet coffee drinking habit that was so pervasive abroad. So, with only P90,000, three sets of
chairs, and a home-use espresso machine, he opened
the first Coffee Dream kiosk outside the Ayala Cinemas in 1996.
“My goal was to inculcate gourmet-coffee drinking into the consciousness of the middle-income individual,” Soco says. This meant balancing quality
with price. He also wanted to bring back the Philippines’ old glory as one of the world’s foremost coffee
producers by using only locally grown coffee beans.
“Our homegrown blends are unique and something
we should patronize and be proud of. I therefore wasted no time in developing the Coffee Dream blend, design, and concept with the help of my team.”
fessional organization that has
for its vision the “creation of
awareness and appreciation for
local coffee.” “We believe that
the country is best served by
patronizing our own products,”
Soco says.
Coffee Dream’s product offerings reflect this pride in all
things Filipino: Kape Pares, a breakfast set consisting of a Coffee Dream blend and pan de sal or cheese
bread, and local delicacies like dried mango and chicharon. “This is our way of telling our customers, ‘This is
your brand, and this is your coffee,’” he adds.
Coffee Dream took the franchising route when
it decided to expand in 2000. As it was building its
franchising arm, the company learned to be picky
with the location of its outlets. Soco explains: “We
realized that with the coffee business, the opportunity lay in non-mainstream areas. That’s why Coffee
Dream expanded only to what I call visionary markets—we opened branches where we became the pioneering coffee shop in the area. That’s how we became the first to open in Cagayan, General Santos,
Cavite, Davao, and Bohol.”
Today, Coffee Dream has become a national brand
with 29 branches all over the country, but it has stuck
to kiosks instead of full store set-ups to ensure leaner
operations. “We just have enough people helping us,”
Soco says. “In fact, the company’s flat structure makes
it easier for us to reach one another.”
He adds that an entrepreneur has to be passionate and needs to understand the market and to know
how to provide what it wants. He explains: “You may
love the business so much, but if you don’t give what
your market wants, your business just won’t work.
It’s all about providing the right product to the right
market.” n
GLENN SOCO’s
goal was to
instill drinking
gourmet co�ee
into the middleclass Filipino’s
consciousness—
and so he needed
to balance quality
with price.
The downside to being among the first in the market was that for a while, no one was willing to follow
Soco’s initiative. His coffee was cheaper than that offered by competitors, but it still cost more than the instant blends sold in sachets. “But I persisted because I
believed there was an opportunity waiting to be tapped
in the Filipinos’ love for hanging out,” he says.
Coffee Dream had since evolved into a more pro-
CONTACT DETAILS
n
a
c
u
Yo
o
do this,t o
C
offee Dream is
known for its
good customer
service. In particular,
its staff are trained to
remember the names of
regular customers and
their favorite drinks.
“But our being able to
provide quality service
comes from fostering
a culture where every
one feels he has a stake
in the company,” Glenn
Soco says.
To that end, he says,
he has arranged for
each kiosk to function
as a profit center owned
by its employees. They
then earn commissions
and rewards for good
sales performance and
for addressing customer
needs as they see fit.
“That’s how empowered
each Coffee Dream
employee is,” Soco says.
COFFEE DREAM
Witco Bldg., Ace Furtura St., Mandaue City
Telephone: (032) 344-7249 • Telefax: (032) 345-1625
E-mail: co�[email protected]
INNOVATORS
system and to start rebuilding the brand.”
Of the four GoodAh!!! outlets Soler acquired, all
but one had shut down. The new management thus
reopened outlets at its existing sites, and then started franchising the restaurant in earnest. After that,
the new management went to the next level: building the company’s franchise network.
”That’s what we are doing now,” says Che Soler’s brother Ricky, who is now
RICKY SOLER
also involved in managing the
and his brother
food chain’s franchise. “The
CHE were
previous owners were not reboth ‘batang
ally focused on building their
GoodAh!!!’—so,
franchise. For the business to
a�er buying
the franchise,
go big, however, franchising is
they set about
the best vehicle. We are therereengineering
fore now changing things that
the well-loved
didn’t work and enhancing
brand.
those that did work.”
Che and
Ricky Soler
GoodAh!!!
‘We developed an entirely
new franchise system and
rebuilt the brand’
By Dulce Castillo-Morales
O
ver three years ago, when he purchased and took over GoodAh!!!
Restaurant from its original owners,
Jose Antonio “Che” Soler pondered
this option: Should he rebuild the
company even if the only good thing still going for it
is its brand? The once robust business had been going through bad times, but the restaurant’s name had
maintained a strong positive connotation in people’s minds.
This was reason enough for Soler, president of
Del Sol Foods Inc., to accept the challenge of reviving the self-proclaimed “25-hour” food chain.
On top of that, he admits, he himself was a “batang
GoodAh!!!”—somebody who grew up on the food
shop’s meals.
The shop had its glory days in the 1980s when it
popularized traditional hot and quickly-served Filipino snacks, particularly goto and arroz caldo (richly flavored porridge) as well as the silog fare (various viands
with fried rice and fried eggs). These offerings made
the “GoodAh!!!” name and eateries so popular that it
even inspired a comedy movie of that title.
Being a close associate of the previous owners (he
prefers not to mention their names), Soler was there
to help them sell the business when they decided to
give it up. However, when three months passed and
there was no interested buyer, the owners asked Sol56 ENTREPRENEUR SPECIAL EDITION
er if he wanted to take over the business himself. He
thought it over for a month and on September 15,
2005, he bought the brand and the trademark, the
menus, the two company-owned stores, and the two
franchises of the food chain.
“The first thing I had to do was to reengineer the
whole business operation and to come up with the appropriate systems,” Soler explains. “The existing systems were okay in terms of store operations, but on
the franchise level, there really were no systems at all.
We therefore had to develop an entirely new franchise
n
a
c
u
Yo
o
do this,t o
C
he Soler knew
that running
GoodAh!!! was not
really in synch with his
other businesses, Solerex
Water Technologies
Inc. (a water treatment
business) and Crystal
Clear Water (a purified
water distribution
business), but he
nevertheless decided
to take it on as another
challenge and learning
experience.
“I did an informal
survey in my Crystal
Clear outlets in Metro
Manila,” Soler says.
“I asked if they could
recall GoodAh!!! and if
they would be willing to
go into that restaurant
business themselves.
From among my 30
franchisees, 25 gave
positive responses.
But the responses of
the remaining five
franchisees weren’t
really negative; it was
just that they were
also in the same food
business or were already
contented with just doing
the water business.”
After consulting
people close to him and
his business associates,
he firmed up his decision
to revive the brand.
As of last August, the revitalized GoodAh!!! had
already grown to 26 outlets. Che Soler says he originally wanted to open 180 stores in 2008, but he has
pared that target down to a more modest, more doable 90 stores. In any case, just two years after acquiring the food chain, Soler has virtually recovered his
initial investment in the business.
Goodah!!! celebrated its 25th year in March this
year still living true to its Taglish catchphrase “Pagkain for every all” (“Food for everyone”). This time,
though, its outlets are beginning to attract big numbers of an entirely new set of customers—the callcenter crowd, an entirely new generation of “batang
GoodAh!!!.” n
CONTACT DETAILS
GOODAH!!!
Del Sol Foods Inc., 369 Dr. Sixto Antonio Avenue, Maybunga, Pasig City
Telephones: (02) 6424489; (02) 642-9295 • Fax: (02) 6404989; (02) 6404237
Website: www.goodah.com.ph
INNOVATORS
Tanny Syfu
Tri-Isys Internet
‘In the Philippines, brand
counts for a lot’
By Rafael Santos
Photo by Jun Pinzon
A
t the peak of its market dominance in
2000, dial-up Internet service provider Tri-Isys already saw the storm clouds
coming: the introduction of high-speed
broadband in the local market. But
as Tanny Syfu, the company’s chief executive adviser, now recalls, the company had underestimated the
impact the new and much faster type of Internet service would have on the market.
“Back then, we thought that high speed broadband
was only a trickle,” he says. “This was because broadband was relatively expensive to operate, and we fig-
ured that the application would only serve big companies that could afford it, as what was then happening
in other countries. But time has proven that this assumption wasn’t very accurate.”
Indeed, with the advent of broadband, the operating costs of an Internet service dropped dramatically,
and domestic telephone companies could now afford
to offer the service at increasingly cheaper rates. The
alarm bells sounded for Tri-Isys.
Syfu recalls what the company did in self-defense: “We researched and planned a course of action to counter the threat. But as things stood at the
time, the company didn’t own the cable links needed to bring Internet service to consumers; we simply
had no choice but to lease them from the telephone
companies.”
Tri-Isys felt that it was equipped to weather the
storm because of the company’s strong foothold in
the prepaid service arena. Indeed, as 2006 rolled in,
the company was finally able to identify the market
niche it was going into given the new competitive situation: corporate security services in the form of antivirus and security software, Second Generation UTM
(Unified Threat Management) for corporate security solutions, and Voice Over the
Internet Protocol (VoIP), a comTri-Isys
invested in
munication service that bypassresearch
es traditional telephone lines and
to find out
courses its data through broadband
precisely what
lines instead.
consumers
“We knew what we wanted to
want out of
do,
so we went about implementthe things
ing
the plan,” Syfu explains. “A
they buy.
good thing about that move was
that we had the existing backbone to support it, so
we only had to buy the license to distribute anti-virus
and UTM security software and to secure the lines we
needed for the VoIP service.”
Despite taking this new direction in its business,
the company maintained prepaid Internet service
vending as its core business. Syfu explains that the
new ventures of Tri-Isys were meant to reinforce and
not to totally reroute its prepaid Internet service, the
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A
common
pitfall in
diversification
is not being able to
properly judge the
market. A company
needs to invest in
research to find
out precisely what
consumers want out of
the things they buy.
Thus, to ensure
that your new offering
doesn’t turn out to be a
flop, Tanny Syfu of TriIsys says you need to
closely watch the trends
in the market and, if
need be, engage the
services of a competent
research firm.
Once you have
rolled out and
demonstrated a
product to potential
customers, Syfu
says, make sure not
to overlook finding
satisfactory answers to
the following questions:
“So what? Why should
customers care about
your product? What
will the product do for
them?”
In the case of TriIsys, Syfu says his
company decided to
go into corporate data
security solutions in
the country because
it knew that there
was a demand for
them. Knowing that
the market preferred
branded products, TriIsys bought the licenses
for well-known security
solutions software from
India.
demand for which has remained consistent.
“It’s a way to diversify, to mix things up a little bit,”
he says. “This is the only way for the company to grow:
by maintaining our dominance of the prepaid market,
and by becoming more aggressive in penetrating the
corporate and business segments.”
Tri-Isys plans to roll out more new services, including Managed Leased Lines, Managed Services, Bonded Links, and Wi-Fi services for consumers
along with more managed IT solutions for corporate
clients. Syfu expressed confidence that these new
moves will spur more growth for the company in the
years to come. n
TRI-ISYS INTERNET
5F AIC Center Bldg., 204 Escolta St., Binondo, Manila • Telephone: (02) 230-8777
Website: www.tri-isys.com
INNOVATORS
Eric Tan
ploy Filipino workers abroad. However, since acquisition of an international license required considerable
sums of money, the group decided to get their feet wet
in the local market first. They then invested P4 million to start MPower Asia in 2004.
His sole investment in the company was time and
effort, but Dr. Tan was named general manager and operations head of MPower Asia. His partners had other
family businesses to handle, so they all chose to be silent partners, handling only the financials and backoffice responsibilities.
The company initially did well deploying janitors and promo girls. After a few months, however, it
could hardly find any more clients. It was at this
low point that an unexpected client, Lotus Spa,
commissioned MPower Asia to provide it with
20 massage therapists. Dr. Tan recalls: “They supplied us with their training manual, and our job
was to look for and train the required massage
therapists. With that deal, in fact, Lotus Spa became our very first spa client.”
With his strong hands-on approach, Dr. Tan
decided to research various massage techniques
on his own and trained the therapists himself. “I
did so because I enjoy dealing with people and
find it so rewarding to train them and help them
find work,” he says.
As it turned out, the Lotus Spa contract not
only helped get MPower back on its feet but also
set it on an entirely new direction.
“Our approach to the business was entirely
different from those of other establishments,”
Dr. Tan explains. “Most of them produce their
first batch of therapists by pirating a senior therapist from another establishment to do the training.
This can be such a hassle because before they can put
themselves in operation, they first have to put up a
training facility, develop expensive training manuals, give allowances to the therapist trainers—the
whole works.”
With the promotion of the country’s massage services both here and abroad now its ultimate goal,
MPower Asia
‘This business
was purely accidental’
By Katrina Tan
D
r. Eric Tan, MD, has always been
an entrepreneur at heart. From the
fourth grade until he got his medical technology degree from the University of Santo Tomas, he had pursued one business sideline after another: supplying
sports uniforms to grade-school intramural participants, running a fish breeding company, owning a
fruit-shake stall, even operating a Mexican restaurant. After getting his medical degree from the Fatima Medical College in 1998, however, he finally
found his true calling: as manpower provider specializing in the training and deployment of massage therapists.
Today, Dr. Tan, now 37, manages MPower Asia,
a company that runs three core business operations:
the Philippines Wellness Institute, a therapist training center; the Orange Home Spa, a massage home
service; and Beyond Medi-spa, an in-hospital center
providing massage to patients that need them.
“It’s funny because although I’ve been involved in
so many businesses, this one was purely accidental,” he
says, recalling that he was actually on his way to becoming an oncologist (a specialist in cancer and other tumors) like his father. “I was in the United States,
thinking of applying for work there, when I got this
call from a friend back in the Philippines. He was asking me to join a manpower recruitment business he
and his partners were starting. Since I love dealing
with people, I accepted his invitation.”
The proposed business was initially intended to be
an international manpower company that would de-
DR. ERIC TAN decided to research various massage
techniques, and trained the therapists himself.
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r. Eric Tan of
lectures in provinces, and
MPower Asia
even talking to people
says the main
in malls. But he says the
difficulty the company
best promotion is getting
encounters is finding
referrals from the
enough people to train.
company’s graduates.
He thus actively looks
“We get 14 to 30
for prospects by running
students a month,” he
ads in the newspaper
says. “Aside from skill,
classifieds, giving
I look for character in
a prospective
massage
therapist. I want
our therapists
to be those who
will feel pride in
their work. Of
course, it can’t
be helped that
some would
leave in the
middle of the
course, but I
always try to
learn from every
experience with
them.”
MPower Asia recently expanded its services to include spa conceptualization and consultation. “I’m
constantly keeping ourselves one step ahead in all our
training,” says Dr. Tan. “The point has been reached
that some people have begun to call me ‘The Spa
King’, but I don’t mind that at all. I’m very happy
to help people find a livelihood. For me, in fact, the
best reward for what I’m doing is the gratitude and
thanks I get from those that I’ve trained.” n
MPOWER ASIA
409 Bldg., Shaw Blvd., Mandaluyong City 1500 • Telephones: (02) 724-0359; (02) 723-7714
INNOVATORS
Jimmy Thai
Primer Group
‘The best customer experience
is aligned with the company’s
people and brand values’
By Iela Karunungan
H
e describes himself as a “shy, stayaway-from-the-limelight guy,” but
Jimmy Thai says this has not dampened his entrepreneurial spirit. In
fact, the business sense in him was so
strong that his grandfather, Sia Tao, decided to fund
Thai’s first venture—selling stickers—with P50 in capital when he was still in the second grade.
Thai learned the basics of entrepreneurship when
he still was growing up. He had helped out in the Thai
family’s hardware store on Ongpin Street in Manila’s
Chinatown, doing such tasks as warehousing, delivery, purchasing, selling, even collection.
In 1979, after getting his degree in Marketing
from the De La Salle UniversiJIMMY THAI:
ty, Thai joined the Ever-Gotesco
The Primer
Group as finance officer. He would
Group is one
stay with the company for the
of the first
next nine years, learning a great
vendors
deal in the process. Its founder, Go
to execute
the ‘shopTong, whom he considers the secin-a-shop’
ond most influential person in his
concept.
life, encouraged him to “envision
the future.”
In 1985, while he was still working for Ever-Gotesco, Thai and four friends established the Primer
Group. They traded assorted seasonal merchandise
for the next four years until 1989, when their company acquired the exclusive distributorship of the Samsonite brand of luggage and travel accessories.
It was a huge break for the Primer Group, but it also
came at a time when department stores were refusing
to carry Samsonite because it was simply too expensive for the market then. Thus, to gain entry into the
department stores, the Primer Group agreed to sell
the products on concession terms, which means that
the department stores would only pay for units actually sold. In addition, the Primer Group became one
of the first vendors to execute the “shop-in-a-shop”
concept, which means leasing exclusive space within a department store to give one’s products a distinct
display area.
By aggressively doing their business this way, Thai
and his partners managed to grow their P500,000
startup capital into a broad and thriving business.
Today, its luggage stores—namely Travel Club, Brat-
pack, and R.O.X. (Recreational Outdoor Exchange)
stores—are the foremost of the Primer Group’s businesses. The stores number about
36 combined, all located in prime
mall locations nationwide. In addition, the Travel Club now has a
store in Kuala Lumpur, marking
the first step in Primer Group’s regional expansion.
The Travel Club bills itself
as a traveler’s “one-stop shop solutions provider.” The five partners in Primer Group came up
with this concept
of the first multibrand luggage and
bags store in 1992.
They were then
on a trip abroad
and got to experience the mobile
demands of traveling, thus leading them to hatch
the idea.
Since then,
Primer Group has
successfully marketed a wide range
of international
luggage and luggage accessories. They now classify these products into three product lines, namely Travel (Samsonite, American Tourister, Victorinox, among others), Lifestyle (Jansport, Kickers,
LA Gear) and Outdoor (The North Face, Timberland, Teva).
Because of its innovative approaches to marketing
and retailing, the Travel Club was named the 2007
“Retailer of the Year” by the Philippine Retailers Association. Thai says that this honor has given the Primer
Group “greater credentials,” making it even more difficult for the once terribly shy guy to stay away from
the limelight. n
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A
brand-driven
company,
the Primer
Group relies on the
power of the brands it
carries and the level
of relationship these
brands have with their
customers.
Jimmy Thai says
that to build these
relationships and
foster marketing
innovation, the
Primer Group follows
these three guiding
principles: relevance,
uniqueness, and
consistency.
The group gives
priority to the degree
of relevance each
brand’s campaign
will bring to the life
and lifestyle of its
customers. “Our
customer is first on
our minds,” says
Thai. “From program
execution to offerings,
the campaign should
be chiefly beneficial
to our customers. By
making our business
relevant to them, we
are able to build trust,
credibility, and lasting
relationships.”
Thai says that by
constantly thinking
out of the box, Primer
Group develops fresh,
unique perspectives on
products and services
to cope with changing
market and consumer
trends. “Innovations
allow us to stand out in
the crowded market,”
he adds.
Finally, consistency
means providing
the best customer
experience through
aligned people and
brand values as well as
business principles. “We
walk the talk,” he says.
PRIMER GROUP OF COMPANIES
Suite 902 State Centre, 333 Juan Luna Street, 1006 Binondo, Manila
Website: www.primergrp.com
INNOVATORS
Paulo Tibig
V-Cargo
‘One of the best things we did
was getting outside help’
By Rafael Santos
Photo by Walter Villa
I
n 1998, Paulo Tibig was doing well running
two profitable laundromats in downtown Manila, with both enjoying a
steady clientele and fast- Vintel, now
growing revenues. Based V-Cargo, ‘was
on gut feel and a spur-of-the-mo- a hands-on
ment idea, however, he thought of business from
the start,’
going out of the business and putsays PAULO
ting up a logistics and cargo com- TIBIG. ‘I was
pany instead.
involved in
But the problem was that Tib- delivering the
ig didn’t have the money to put goods myself.
his new business idea onstream. It was tough
He therefore had to resort to what work.’
he calls “creative financing”: he borrowed P150,000
from his future mother-in-law to capitalize the venture. He then purchased a second-hand truck to get
the new business started.
He explains that decision: “Back then, my fiancée and I were wary of approaching banks for a loan.
We were afraid to be turned down because we didn’t
have a credit history. So we decided to borrow from
her mother. We got the loan, and the good thing about
it was that it was interest-free as well.”
Tibig, who named the company Vintel Logistics
Inc., initially focused on bundling services—which
means packing two separate products together to be
sold at a discount. Gradually, he added four other service lines to the business: merchandise materials distribution, drop-box management, freight forwarding,
and events logistics.
“It was a hands-on business from the start,” he recalls. “I was involved in delivering the goods myself,
with my wife and I running the day-to-day operations.
It was tough work.”
The business did very well, though, so Tibig was
able to repay the loan from his mother-in-law after
only a year in operation. However, he eventually sold
his two laundromats because he could no longer find
time to manage them. He has no regrets with that decision, though. Today, Vintel Logistics now makes sales
revenues in the seven figures, consistently recording a
20 percent growth rate for the past five years.
The success of Vintel Logistics has been largely due to its being a consistent industry trendsetter.
Aside from offering extended pickup times for cargo,
it offers longer booking hours than the rest of the industry. Its flexibility and reliability have always been
its main selling proposition. On top of this, it has developed strong expertise in round-the-clock, nationwide deliveries of foodstuffs, raw materials, and manufactured goods and of marketing materials such as
posters and streamers.
“For our delivery system, we are always on call
24/7, and our cutoff time is 7:00 p.m., three hours
longer than that of the competition,” Tibig says.
“That gives us a longer window to service our cus-
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s Vintel Logistics
grew from a
mom-and-pop
outfit to a full-fledged
cargo company, the Tibig
couple eventually had
to hire a consultant to
help professionalize the
company’s information
technology and financial
systems.
“One of the best
things we did was getting
outside help,” Paulo Tibig
recalls. “We realized that
some of the things we
needed to grow were
outside our sphere of
competence. To help us
streamline the business,
we needed to hire people
with prior experience.”
The services of the
consultants cost the
company upwards of
P300,000 each, but
Tibig views that cost as
a necessary investment—
one that really helped
Vintel grow.
“You must not be
blinded by your own
brilliance,” he says.
“Sometimes, you need
a fresh point of view
to help you decide
what’s best for the
business. Indeed, by
hiring consultants, we
were able to develop the
systems that we still use
today.”
tomers without compromising the reliability of our
service.”
In nine years, Vintel Logistics has grown from a
pocket-size cargo company to a medium-scale business that employs a full-time staff of 60 and operates
a fleet of 15 delivery trucks. It currently services such
big-name companies as Pepsi, Chowking, Red Ribbon, and Procter and Gamble Philippines.
Vintel Logistics definitely has arrived as an industry player, but Tibig is still not content with the
growth that it has achieved. He wants to make it one
of the country’s bigger logistics and cargo solutions
companies.
“To reflect our bigger plans for the coming years,
we have changed our corporate identity to V-Cargo,
which is the company’s new name,” Tibig explains.
He says that a remittance service, tentatively called
V-Cash, is in the planning stage. n
VINTEL LOGISTICS INC. (V-CARGO)
Warehouse 1, Armal Compound, C. Raymundo Ave., Maybunga, Pasig City
Telephone: (02) 900-0002; (02) 900-0003 • Website: www.vcargo.com.ph
INNOVATORS
Tom Viray
Orient Integrated
Commercial
For a businessman
to succeed, he has to honor
his commitments
By L. T. Guilas
A
cknowledged as the father of silkscreen printing in the Philippines,
Tomas “Tom” Viray has always
dreamt of becoming independent
ly wealthy. Even when he was already nearing 50, he continued to pursue that
dream, going into silkscreen printing with only
P5,000 in start-up capital. Today, that small business has grown into the Orient Group of Companies, a P200-million enterprise engaged in industrial signage, labels, packaging, offset printing, digital
printing, and trading.
Now 83, but still active in running the business, Viray recalls that as a young boy of 8 in 1933,
he had fabricated a kariton
TOM VIRAY: ‘With
(makeshift cart) from scrap
four growing
and the wheels of a worn-out
children, I thought
bicycle. He did this to earn
that going into
some money transporting
business was the
the goods bought by people
best thing to do.’
from Divisoria in Manila. His
family lived on Antonio Rivera St. in Tondo, just
a few blocks away from Divisoria, and he remembers dreaming of how it would feel like to have a
calesa (horse-drawn carriage) so he wouldn’t have
to be so heavily burdened.
A few years later, Viray realized that dream
and got to own a calesa. He then dreamed of having something even better: a car that could transport him in grander style. It took him much longer to realize that dream, but today, he owns not
just a car but a whole fleet of cars and commercial
vehicles as well.
Viray says that the road to his first million definitely wasn’t easy: “I worked as a civilian employee in the military for 27 years, and I retired in 1971
when I realized that as a government employee,
I couldn’t open up opportunities for a better life
for myself and my family. With four growing children, I thought that going into business was the
best thing to do.”
He recalls that one day, while looking for the
right business to go into, he chanced upon a man
doing screen-printing. “I got interested in what he
was doing, so I offered to sell his products for him,
an offer that he readily accepted,” he says. “We
then agreed on a partnership and Orient Integrated Commercial Inc. was born. We began with nine
staff members, squeezing ourselves in a two-room
commercial apartment.”
He entered the screen-printing business at a
time when it was still largely considered as a backyard industry. “Unfortunately, my industrial partner
didn’t like the idea of sharing his technique with
me and our people, so we decided to part ways after only a few months,” he recalls.
Viray and his workers at Orient stayed on, but
the first few years of the business were very unstable due to very limited working capital. Also, being
all silkscreen neophytes, they made so many mistakes and often had to repeat job orders. He then
realized that for the business to succeed, it had to
greatly improve its screen-printing techniques, so
he started sending his employees to skills improvement seminars and workshops.
Later, Viray found a supplier from the United
States for the luminous holograms that garment
manufacturers used for their jeans
line. These holograms proved so
popular that they became a major moneymaker for him. In fact,
it was as their distributor that he
earned his first million at age 50.
Viray got even more substantial orders for holograms from various garments manufacturers, so he
needed to increase his production
very quickly. He was also able to
bag a million-peso contract with ABS-CBN for the
sarimanok scratch-on promo followed by a similar
order from the makers of Lucky Me instant noodles.
He took a bank loan to purchase a brand-new offset machine on lease basis, eventually acquiring a
total of five special labeling machines to meet the
increasing demand for various orders.
In 1980, after training with 3M USA on the
various techniques and materials for traffic engineering, he became a trusted supplier of 3M
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o he could
always pay
back his
loan amortizations
promptly, Tomas
Viray of the Orient
Group of Companies
holds a strict rein on
his finances. Then as
now, he believes that
for a businessman to
succeed, he has to
honor his commitments.
“Though thick and thin,
even in times of economic
crises, I have never failed
to pay my obligations on
time,” he says.
Philippines. Over
the years, this enabled him and his
four children to establish four more
companies engaged
in various printing and signage applications. His
elder daughter Celia put up Modagraphics Builders Corp. to sell illuminated flexible signages; his
eldest son Cesar came up with Mega Specialty
Labels; his second son Celso started Metrocolor Corp. to do offset printing for posters, calendars, newsletters, and brochures; and his youngest
daughter Celina founded International Graphics
Supply Inc. to provide screen-printing as well as
digital supplies and services. n
ORIENT INTEGRATED COMMERCIAL INC.
Kingspoint Subdivision, Novaliches, Quezon City
Telephone: (02) 937-2050; (02) 930-4772 • Fax: (02) 930-3895
INNOVATORS
feature either ceramic or paper
tags. Although the paper bags remained a fast-moving item, however, Vito realized after three
months that his income from
them could not even pay for just
the showroom rentals.
Recalls Vito: “I was just selling at P35 to P96 apiece depending on the size, giving me a margin of only 25 percent. Most of
this margin just went to the pay of my workers.”
So Vito wracked his brains to come up with something that could be truly profitable without requiring
big money to get started, and one that could relate
well to Bacolod City in particular.
Finally, he came up with the idea of producing
papier mache masks. Vito thought of it because Bacolod City has a 25-year-old annual celebration in
October, the MassKara festival, that features weekend-long street dance competitions among colorful
masked dancers.
With P5,000 in savings from his day job, he then
hired an artist to design some masks and made 30 pieces of them from the waste paper in his printing press.
He named the masks after himself, Vito, and registered
the product under his company, Vito Prints & Pieces. He then put them on display at the ANP Showroom in Bacolod.
His papier mache masks were sold out in no time at
all. Soon after, there was a surge of orders for the masks
from local and foreign tourists, enabling him to recover his capital after just two months of operation.
He recalls that there were times when he found it
so hard to juggle his time doing three things on a given
day: painting the masks himself, managing his printing
press and the mask business, and teaching at the university. He says with a laugh: “There were even times
when for lack of time, I had to go to class with paint
still all over my hands. As an excuse, I would then tell
my students, ‘Look, these are the hands that work.’”
In 2006, Vito started getting orders for his masks
from companies for use as corporate giveaways or party
At the start,
with no money
to invest, all
JOJO VITO could
think of was to
produce paper
bags out of
the available
raw material
inventory of his
printing press.
Marianito
Vito Jr.
Vito Prints & Pieces
‘Look, these are the hands that work’
By Mishell Malabaguio
H
Photos by Clemn Macasiano Jr.
is five-year-old printing press business in Bacolod City was floundering, so Marianito “Jojo” Vito Jr. was
desperately trying to keep it afloat by
diversifying into other products rath-
er than just accepting printing jobs.
This was in 2005, right after the Association of
Negros Producers (ANP) had invited him to display
his products in the city’s ANP Showroom. Vito, then
37, had quickly accepted the offer although he really
did not have a single tangible product to display for
his company, Papyrus Prints Co. The printing press
had been running at a loss, and to make ends meet,
Vito had to augment his income by teaching management and entrepreneurship at La Consolacion College in Bacolod.
With no money at all to invest, all he could think
of was to produce paper bags out of his available raw
material inventory. Simply to test the market, therefore, he produced 100 pieces of paper bags, printed the
label “Bacolod Bacolod” on them, then registered the
product under the Vito Prints & Pieces brand.
To his surprise, the paper bags sold out fast. This
encouraged him to produce more, adding as an extra
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ven if he has
more workers
now, Jojo Vito of
Vito Prints & Pieces still
designs all the masks
by himself. “I just make
one design and then my
artist will innovate on
it,” he says. “Painting
is really my form of
expression. I don’t feel
tired painting and I don’t
mind working overtime
at night doing it.”
Vito’s creativity has
also allowed him to
diversify his brand. He
now produces other
products such as mask
key chains, clay masks,
wooden masks, framed
masks, masks with
magnets, sculptures,
bag jewelries, semiantique lamps that use
secondhand wood, and
fashion accessories.
With the business
still growing, he is
now exploring the use
of several materials
other than fiberglass
for his masks.
costumes. He decided to further improve the quality of
his products considering that he was now getting orders
from abroad. Then, when the international orders got
so big, he decided to shift from paper to fiberglass—a
difficult and painful process for him because it required
a much more sizeable investment, training in new production technology, and a bigger production area.
Today, the Vito mask has become an all-yearround product that averages 200 pieces per month in
sales, with the volume tripling during the month of
the MassKara Festival in October. From only one artist and a helper, Vito now has three artists, three production assistants, one supervisor, and several subcontractors.
“Passion is the key to our success,” Vito says. “I was
able to grow Vito Prints & Pieces this big because I
have been plowing back my profits into the business
and because we really work very hard at it.” n
VITO PRINTS & PIECES
ANP Showroom, Lourdes-C Bldg., 9th St. cor. Lacson St., Bacolod City, Negros Occidental
Mobile: 0918-9302556 • Fax: (034) 433-5965 • E-mail: [email protected]
INNOVATORS
Albert Yu
Asya Design Partner
‘I want to create not just
buildings but landmarks’
T
here’s an unending hubbub of activity
at the offices of the architectural and
construction firm Asya Design Partner
in Pasay City. Albert Yu, the principal
architect himself, looks as if he would
multiply himself into three if only he could, for at the
moment, his firm is overseeing the construction of as
many as 50 major building projects simultaneously—
and these are only the high-rises.
Name the type of architectural structure, and Yu’s
firm has already conceived, designed, and built several of it both here and abroad—shopping malls, highrise residential and office buildings, residential communities, schools, churches, hotels, and resorts. In
the Philippines, among the firm’s notable commercial projects are the 168 Shopping
Give Asya
Mall in Binondo, Canyon Cove and
Design a
Residential Resort and Hotel in Naconcept for
sugbu, Batangas, and the SM Mezza
a building,
Residences in Sta. Mesa. The firm and they ‘can
has also designed several commersubmit a
cial buildings in southern China and design within
two weeks,’
in Shanghai.
says Albert
True to Yu’s vision, most of these
Yu. ‘And we
structures have become popular
never repeat
landmarks in their respective localour designs.’
ities. “Ever since I was young, I knew
I wanted to be an architect, but I wanted to create not
just buildings but landmarks,” he says.
While studying architecture, he worked mornings
as a draftsman and renderer for renowned Filipino architect Willy Coscolluela, attending classes only in the
afternoons and evenings. “It wasn’t because I needed
the money,” he explains. “I just wanted to get as much
experience as possible. After all, you can only learn
so much in school.”
Right after acquiring his professional license in
1993, Yu put up Asya Design Partner. With just three
architects, he embarked on his first project: a four-story
residential building. It proved to be a very auspicious
start. “When that building was completed and I joined
its owners during its house-blessing, I was able to get
10 more clients from among the guests,” he recalls.
Yu went on to grow his four-person firm into one
of the best and biggest in the country, with current
staffing of 82. During the past three years, BCI Asia,
the region’s leading construction information service,
has named Asya Design among the top 10 architectural firms in the Philippines. These firms are selected
based on the highest accumulated value of the active
projects in their portfolios for the past year.
The company counts among its clientele three of
the country’s top developers—Robinsons Land Corp.,
SM Investment Corp., and Brittany Corp. All of them
had first enlisted the firm’s services by referral. Says
Yu: “In all of Asya’s 14 years in business, we have never listed ourselves in the phone directory, and neither
have we ever made a bid for a project. It’s always the
clients who came to us.”
All of his projects, Yu says with pride, are almost
always sold out even before construction begins. “This
is because whenever I come up with a design, I think
like a developer myself,” he explains. “I know what
features to include to make a particular building attractive to the buyer.”
Asya Design Partner prides itself on its innovative
designs and the speed of their execution. “Give us a
concept and we can submit a design in two weeks,”
Yu says, “and we never repeat our designs. It’s a policy that also serves as excellent training for our staff
because it exposes them to so many different concepts at one time.”
As with most successful architectural and construction professionals, Yu hopes to penetrate the global market and design more buildings for overseas clients. He likewise dreams of designing a building that’s
more a piece of art than a habitable structure. “Like a
building that’s tilted on one side,” he says.
The market might not be ready for this concept for a
while, but he believes there’s no harm in dreaming early
and dreaming big. After all, Yu says, it was exactly how
he started out. Look where it has taken him. n
CONTACT DETAILS
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A
part from his
Among his initiatives
innovative
is providing more open
designs, what
spaces around building
sets Albert Yu’s brand
structures to improve
of development apart is
indoor air quality.
his advocacy of “Green
In November
Architecture.” He
2006, Yu cofounded
espouses environment-
the Philippine Green
friendly designs that
Building Council, and
could soften the impact
in 2007, he became the
of development on
only Filipino to join the
human health and
United States Green
the environment.
Building Council.
ASYA DESIGN PARTNER
2/F ACE Building, 353 Protacio St. cor Zamora St., Pasay City
Telephones: (02) 833-8773; (02) 831-4787 • Website: www.asyadesign.net
ALL IN THE FAMILY
Passing
T
the baton
he Zobel de Ayalas,
the Gokongweis,
the Gaisanos, the
Lopezes, the Sys.
When you think of
family businesses
in the Philippines,
these clans come to
mind first.
Clearly, family-owned or family-operated enterprises form the backbone of the
local economy; indeed, studies estimate
that at least 80 percent of Philippine
businesses are family-owned. And this
figure mirrors what’s true for the rest of
the world. According to the journal Family
Business Review, 80 to 90 percent of all
businesses in North America are familyowned; in Europe, it’s anywhere from 60
to 90 percent.
There may be no hard-and-fast statistics
on family businesses in the Philippines, but
no doubt two of the country’s top schools
think these enterprises are worth focusing
on and studying about. Ateneo de Manila
University, for instance, has its Family
Business Development Center at its John
Gokongwei School of Management; De La
2 ENTREPRENEUR 2008
Salle University’s Angelo King Institute has
its Family Business Studies Center.
Also, the University of Southern Maine’s
Institute for Family-Owned Business recently reported that 35 percent of the Fortune
500 companies is family-controlled and that
they account for 50 percent of the United
States’ gross domestic product (GDP), generate 60 percent of employment in the US,
and create 78 percent of all new jobs.
But like all other businesses, family
enterprises have the same—if not more—
challenges to face. Continuity, particularly
succession, and longevity are crucial issues; and when these aren’t addressed
properly, two out of three family enterprises close down before they reach the
second generation, at least according to
US statistics.
In the following pages, however, 14 entrepreneurial Filipino clans show us how
they hurdled their unique challenges on
their way to success. The perseverance
of the Ramoses (National Bookstore), the
phoenix-like rise of the Garcias (Mekeni
Foods), and the vision of the Escuderos
(Villa Escudero) are all outstanding and
inspiring examples.
ALL IN THE FAMILY
PATSY,
MELDY
and TINA
ALEJANDRO:
Their parents
‘refused
to borrow
money.’
Alejandro Family
Papemelroti
‘It has always been my hobby
to make new things out of what
people usually throw away’
By Katrina Tan
Photo by Thaddeus Reantaso
4 ENTREPRENEUR 2008
T
hey might not have had the best-laid
plans when they started Papemelroti in
1967, but after four decades and two generations of running the business, the husband-and-wife team of Benny and Corit
Alejandro have made the curio gift-shop chain one of
the most popular and successful in the country today.
“It has always been my hobby to make new things
out of what people usually throw away,” Corit recalls
how she got started in the business. “I sewed dresses for
my daughters and made toys from toilet paper rolls and
piggy banks from empty bottles. My husband, Benny,
also enjoyed woodworking and making furniture.”
Benny was then looking for a new home for the
family and Corit had asked him to find one where she
could also put up a small store. They found an apartment that fit their requirements along Tomas Morato
in Quezon City, and they moved to it in 1967.
Patsy, the Alejandro couple’s eldest child, recalls:
“My mom would make different crafts and run her shop
on the first floor, while the family lived on the second.
We were just kids then, so naturally, we would help her
out every now and then.”
The couple initially named the store Korben Gifts,
after the first syllables of their first names, and they
opened it for business during their first summer there.
Patsy remembers: “At first, the products we had were
just enough to fill the window display; the rest of the
30 sq m store space was empty. But my parents refused
to borrow money. All of their capital thus came solely from their savings and from my dad’s earnings as a
broker.”
When friends and neighbors soon began frequenting
the store, however, the couple was able to steadily expand the shop’s product line. They even began sourcing
some of their product lines from Europe and the US, but
as the Philippine economy took a plunge and importing became too difficult, they concentrated on making
their own merchandise: figurines, furniture, metal pieces, stationery, woodcarvings, and other crafts.
Having not yet perfected her molding method, Corit
Alejandro would inadvertently produce many pieces of deformed figurines, which surprisingly ended up
becoming a favorite of their customers. This encouraged the Alejandro children, all still in grade school at
that time, to paint figurines and hammer down wooden plaques to give them that distressed, but lovable,
“antique” look.
In May 1976, using all of the profit they had made
from their shop, the Alejandros opened another shop
on the second floor of Ali Mall in Cubao, Quezon
City. This time, they named the shop “Papemelroti,”
CONTACT DETAILS
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ver since the
Alejandro
couple opened
Papemelroti, all of the five
Alejandro siblings have
been in the thick of things
running the business.
Patsy and Peggy would
take turns at the cash
register, Meldy would sell
the items, Robert would
draw decorations on the
little wooden figures, and
Tina, only 7 at that time,
would help out in the gift
wrapping.
Tina remembers: “I
couldn’t even reach the
counter. And since I didn’t
want customers to know
that their gifts were being
wrapped by a kid, I would do
the job on the floor where
they couldn’t see me.”
the acronym formed by the first syllables of the names
of their five children— Patsy, Peggy, Meldy, Robert,
and Tina.
Papemelroti’s biggest attraction was definitely its
charming, distinctly handcrafted items, many of which
were made from recycled materials. “My mother was
naturally thrifty, so a lot of our items were made out of
scraps, natural paper, shells, twigs, and so many others,” says Patsy. “We used recycled brown paper even
back then. Then, we would put sentimental sayings on
some of those items.”
The company now has a chain of 14 gift shops all
over Metro Manila and from its income over the years,
the Alejandro couple had been able to send all of their
five children to college. Each studied and got a college
degree from the University of the Philippines: Patsy in
interior design, Peggy in architecture, Meldy in business administration, Robert in fine arts, and Tina in
mass communications.
Patsy joined the family business right after graduating. Her siblings decided to first work with other companies before finding their way back to Pepemelroti.
Today, Papemelroti now also sells its products wholesale to several stores in the province through resellers and business partners, and has also started exporting them to Hong Kong, Singapore, and other foreign
markets. n
PAPEMELROTI GIFTS AND DECORATIVE ACCESSORIES
G/F, Korben Place, 91 A. Roces Avenue, Quezon City 1103
Fax: (02) 375-1069; (02) 374-2442; (02) 412-6487
E-mail: [email protected] or [email protected] • Website: www.papemelroti.com
2008 ENTREPRENEUR 5
ALL IN THE FAMILY
Mary Grace
ArboledaYoung
Besides Benguet coffee, the coffee shop of the Young
couple also serves espresso, cappuccino, café latte, café
Kalinga, and café amandine, but the only roasts it sells
are Benguet coffee and the D’kapetimusang or civet
coffee, which is one of the most expensive coffee varieties. (The musang or civet cat ingests Benguet coffee beans and then excretes them. The beans are pro-
Cordillera Coffee
‘To grow as a nation,
Filipinos must go back
to their roots’
I
n November of 2003, Mary Grace ArboledaYoung and her Englishman husband Frank
decided to promote Benguet coffee by putting
up Cordillera Coffee on Xavierville Avenue in
Quezon City. A business administration graduate who hails from Kalinga in the Cordillera Region,
Mary Grace says they did so to help
MARY GRACE
rekindle the Filipinos’ passion for
ARBOLEDAtheir own products and rich culture
YOUNG: ‘We
in a market dominated by foreign
help farmers
coffeehouse franchises.
strengthen
“To grow as a nation, the Filitheir faith in
pinos must go back to their roots,”
their product.’
she explains. “We are giving a special focus on Benguet coffee or the Cordillera Arabica
because it’s at par with the Jamaican Blue Mountain
coffee, which is one of the finest and most expensive
coffees in the world.”
Cordillera Coffee sources its coffee beans from
farmers in the adjoining municipalities of Bokod and
Atok in Benguet. These farmers are supported by the
Cordillera Coffee Assistance for Indigenous Development (Coffee AID), of which Mary Grace is the
leading proponent. Coffee AID is a nongovernment
organization whose objective is to ensure consistent
6 ENTREPRENEUR 2008
income and fair trade to the farmers who grow Benguet coffee. It also seeks to promote the preservation
of traditional coffee farming as a livelihood in the
Cordilleras.
“Benguet coffee is smooth and has a fresh, rich
aroma,” says Mary Grace. “It is full-bodied and matures very slowly, thus developing its flavor better. The
high altitude makes the coffee better tasting. The elements of air, climate, and soil combine to make Benguet coffee one of the finest-tasting coffees in the
Philippines.”
cessed inside the cat’s digestive system in such a way
that, according to coffee connoisseurs, they come out
less acidic and more chocolatey.)
Today, from the Young couple’s initial investment
of P1 million, Cordillera Coffee has expanded to five
more coffee shops. These shops are located at the Riverbanks complex in Marikina City, at the School of
Economics and the Institute of Small Scale Industries
CONTACT DETAILS
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he branches of
Cordillera Coffee
are a marriage
of café and gallery.
They often host poetryreading sessions and
their walls are always
decked with artworks
by different artists. “We
want to reach those
who drink coffee and
who appreciate arts and
culture,” Mary Grace
ArboledaYoung says.
As organizer of
Coffee AID, Cordillera
Coffee buys the produce
of the Benguet coffee
farmers in advance
and at a fair price. Says
Mary GraceArboleda
Young: “Through Coffee
AID, we help farmers
strengthen their faith in
their product and feel a
sense of pride in what
they are doing. More
than that, the fair trade
in the coffee they are
producing strengthens
their sense of selfworth.”
at the Diliman, Quezon City campus of the University of the Philippines, at the Philippine Social Science Centre along Commonwealth Ave. in Quezon
City, and at the SM Mall in Baguio City, which, with
a staff of 16, is the largest outlet. “We recovered our
initial investment in the business after three years, but
everything we earned we plowed back to expand the
business,” says Mary Grace.
Currently, Coffee AID is benefiting a total of 50
farmers and their families. Cordillera Coffee buys coffee beans from the farmers at P150 per kilo to supply
its three outlets in Metro Manila and the one in Baguio City. In contrast, if the farmers were to sell their
coffee beans to middlemen or directly to public market stall owners, they would normally be forced to sell
at P100 to P120 per kilo.
“We want Cordillera Coffee to reach an even wider market by putting up more coffee shops,” says Mary
Grace. “This way, we can help more farmers and promote their coffee and their causes even more strongly.”
To this end, Cordillera Coffee has started franchising;
their first franchised outlet is at the Vargas Museum
in the UP Diliman campus. n
CORDILLERA COFFEE
Unit 104 Llanar Building, Xavierville Avenue corner Gonzales Street, Loyola Heights, Quezon City
Telephones: (02) 436-0324; (02) 933-8040
E-mail: cordilleraco�[email protected] • Website: cordilleraco�ee.multiply.com
2008 ENTREPRENEUR 7
ALL IN THE FAMILY
Cecille Co
RJ Jewelry
‘What sets us apart is our
craftsmanship’
By Katrina Tan
F
rom 1970 to 1979, Cecille Co got handson training in jewelry while working as
a stone-setter for another jewelry company. Her job was mainly to set stones
in jewelry mountings by hand.
One day, however, a friend of hers came to see
her and wanted a particular piece of jewelry. “I found
what she wanted and got a good deal for it, so I just
paid cash for it myself,” Co, now the CEO and director of the family-owned RJ Jewelry, recalls. “My
friend paid me back in installments, with a 30 percent markup on a 60-day term, split in two postdated
checks. One deal just led to another after that, and
before I knew it, I had already established a bunch
of regular clientele.”
This steady stream of customers The growth in
prompted Co to leave her job and to the OFW market
open her own jewelry shop in 1979 has enabled
together with her five siblings: Kris- RJ Jewelry to
expand its
tine, Roland, Phinee, Mariane, and
operations
Lilet. The six decided to make the from buying
shop, RJ Jewelry, specialize in fine and selling to
white-gold and yellow-gold jewelry manufacturing
with pearls and precious gemstones. their own
With an initial investment of product line.
about P150,000, they set up shop in their father’s house
in Bulacan. Co used the money to purchase a weighing
scale, a gold and diamond tester, pouches and boxes,
and about 20 to 30 pieces of jewelry. She and her family members then divided the work evenly and handled all the business operations themselves.
“Our target market is the B-income segment,” Co
says. “Our buyers are mostly employees with stable
jobs, businessmen, and sometimes even OFWs [overseas Filipino workers] who buy from us and then resell the items to their coworkers abroad.”
The continuing growth of the country’s
OFWs was that motivated RJ Jewelry to aggressively market its products outside of the Philippines. “Although the local market is okay, we
noticed that many of our good buyers are balikbayans and OFWs,” she says.
Today, RJ Jewelry has expanded its business to manufacturing a jewelry line as well as to buying jewelry
pieces from abroad and selling them locally.
Co says that although the family business is doing well,
it has its share of difficulties particularly in collecting from
clients who buy jewelry on credit. “In this business, there
will be times when you’ll have problems with postdated
checks,” she says. “Our advice? Don’t sell on installment
basis if you don’t know the buyer well enough.”
RJ Jewelry’s products are able to hold their own in
the overseas market. “What sets us apart is our craftsmanship,” says Co. “Our designs are simple yet elegant
and fashionable. Also, we’re always on the lookout for
new designs, and to keep our clients satisfied, we always make it a point to enforce strict quality control
and deliver orders on time.” n
CONTACT DETAILS
8 ENTREPRENEUR 2008
n
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he buy-andsell jewelry
business can
be very profitable
if your credit and
collection is good,
says Cecille Co of
RJ Jewelry. Since
most buy-and-sell
businesses can
be run from one’s
house with minimal
overhead expenses,
their earnings depend
mainly on the product
markup and payment
scheme.
“If you sell on
cash basis, a 10 to 15
percent mark up is
good enough,” she
says. “Installments,
on the other hand,
can be priced with
a 20 to 30 percent
markup, depending
on the terms you give
to your client.” Thus,
if you can realize
a good number of
sales each month and
keep your expenses
to a minimum, you
could get back your
investment in just a
few months.
RJ JEWELRY
6 Purok 4 Tugatog, Meycauayan, Bulacan
Mobile: 0917 5161476
2008 ENTREPRENEUR 9
ALL IN THE FAMILY
Conrado
Escudero
Villa Escudero
This former hacienda is now a
famous tourist spot showcasing
Filipino culture and traditions.
‘My siblings
used to
tease me as
a dreamer,’
CONRADO
ESCUDERO
says, ‘but now
everybody can
see that my
dreams have
all come true.’
By Joel D. Adriano
T
he Escudero family has made a radical
change in their business that very few
other businesses can do without encountering serious difficulties. In 1979, the
family started transforming their 800hectare coconut plantation that straddles San Pablo
City in Laguna and Tiaong in Quezon province into
a themed tourist resort, then trained their plantation
workers to become service staff and cultural performers instead.
Today, Villa Escudero has become one of the country’s most popular tourist destinations south of Manila,
attracting over a million foreign and local tourists every year. Its biggest draw is the fiesta-like atmosphere it
creates each touring day, during which its staff—clad
in traditional native holiday costumes—regales guests
with Filipino folk songs and dances as they tour the
sprawling plantation. The place has retained much of
its rustic charm, but it has become a beehive of tourist activity instead of farming.
Villa Escudero began as a self-contained sugarcane
plantation in the 1800s, but it shifted to coconut during the early 1900s. Don Arsenio, the only child of
the elder Escuderos, later inherited the plantation and,
together with his wife Rosario who was also an only
child, further developed the farm.
From among their seven children, Don Arsenio
Escudero chose their fifth born, Conrado, to run the
family business. Although all of their children grew
up in the hacienda and were therefore all exposed to
farming, only Ado, as the family fondly calls him, had
chosen to formally take up a course on agriculture. After finishing the course at Cornell University in the
United States, he decided he also wanted to become
a chef, so he also earned a degree in hotel and restaurant administration.
But with the world market price of coconut declining steadily in the 1970s, Conrado—once a spokesman
for the Philippine coconut industry—thought that it
was time to put up another business as a fallback. He
then approached his father and proposed to convert
part of the family estate into a resort—not just any
resort, he explains, but one that would bring the visitors back in time while showcasing Filipino culture
and traditions.
“My siblings were skeptical and used to tease me as
a dreamer,” Escudero, now 75, says, “but now everybody can see that my dreams have all come true.”
He saw two distinct aspects of the family estate
that he could use to make the farm a destination of
choice: his father’s huge and highly diverse antique
collection, including the biggest private religious collection in the country, and the surroundings of the
estate itself. Running through part of the plantation
is the Labasin River, and the Escuderos had acquired
the rights to a portion of it on which they later created a waterfall.
Before Conrado was able to put his plans into motion, however, Don Arsenio died in 1978.
Discouraged, he sought the advice of a village elder—a reputed seer—on what to do.
The elder recommended that he proceed
with his idea, saying his late father’s kindness would guarantee its success.
This revived Conrado’s enthusiasm and
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C
onrado Escudero
emphasizes the
importance of
hands-on management
in running a business.
In Villa Escudero,
he alone makes the
final decisions on
management matters,
but he draws on the
support of various
family members in
running the resort.
More importantly,
Escudero says, you
need to command the
respect and loyalty of
your staff. “I am firm
but fair to my staff,” he
says. “Since the time
of my father, we have
always been generous
to our workers. We have
consistently provided
them with free housing,
medical benefits, and
scholarships for their
children.”
he got a P30,000 loan from his mother in 1979 to fund
the development of a portion of the farm near the foot
of the river waterfalls. He made
it a picnic area by furnishing it
with two makeshift tables, several wooden benches, and a
small hut. The concept quickly
became popular among visitors
from Metro Manila looking for
an idyllic rural setting for their
out-of-town trips. Eventually,
the resort became the favorite
haunt of politicians, show business personalities, movie producers, and couples looking for a unique wedding venue.
“When I first started I only had three staff
plus myself as the cook,” Escudero says. Today, the 100-hectare resort now employs a
staff of 700. It has 34 cottages for overnight
guests, three swimming pools, several function rooms, an air-conditioned conference
center, a recreational hall, and a churchlike museum with a modern-Gothic design
where Don Arsenio’s quaint antique collection is on permanent display. n
VILLA ESCUDERO
Manila o�ce: 1059 Estrada St., Malate, Manila • Provincial mailing address: P.O. Box 4,
San Pablo City, Laguna 4000 • Telephones: (02) 0830; (02) 523-0392; (02) 523-2944;
(049) 561-3808 (Laguna o�ce) • Website: www.villaescudero.com
ALL IN THE FAMILY
Felix Garcia and Family
Mekeni Food Corp.
‘We obtained the proper
education for the business’
By Dulce Castillo-Morales
‘R
Photo by Thaddeus Reantaso
emarkable” is the word that
can best describe the camaraderie among the five sons of Felix “Tatang” Garcia and Medicia
“Meding” Garcia, the patriarch
and matriarch of the clan that owns Mekeni Food
Corp., a highly successful Pampanga-based meat processing company.
This amiable relationship between the brothers—Adriano (Adrian), Prudencio (Pruds), Angelito
(Lito), Diosdado (Doods), and Nardo (Nards)—has
much to do with the continuing growth and prosperity of the family-owned company, which makes a wide
range of meat products that include chicharon (pork
skin cracklings), tocino (cured pork), hotdogs, bacon,
ham, longaniza, beef tapa (cured beef), and bologna.
Indeed, it forms the backbone of their rags-to-riches
story or, more aptly perhaps, an ashes-to-success story—for their meat-processing business had been devastated by the eruption of nearby Mount Pinatubo in
1991 but had somehow survived, nursing itself to a
strong recovery.
Being full-blooded Pampangueños, Tatang Felix
and Imang Meding (in Kapampangan, “Tatang” is a
patronymic for “father” and “Ima” for “mother”) and
their brood are all fiercely proud of their hometown
of Porac and loyal to it. Thus, in 1991, when the Pinatubo disaster struck, their first thought was to help
in the rehabilitation of their fellow townsfolk. This
abiding sense of community has been a hallmark not
only of the Garcia family but also of Mekeni Food as
a corporate citizen.
Mekeni Food is no overnight success, having started
as a small-time backyard poultry and piggery business.
To this day, Tatang Felix still could not believe that it
had become a full-scale commercial meat-processing
enterprise. He recalls: “I started a backyard poultry and
piggery only to support my family
FELIX GARCIA
and to augment my salary. At the
and his sons:
time, my wife and I were schoolAn abiding
teachers in the mountains. What
sense of
my small backyard business has becommunity
come truly exceeded all my expechas been a
tations. I never really thought that
hallmark of
it would get this big.”
Mekeni Food
From growing and selling liveas a corporate
citizen.
stock, the Garcia family eventually ventured into meat processing,
initially by producing chicharon and tocino. These meat
products under the Mekeni brand immediately became
popular in Porac and in Pampanga’s nearby towns.
But just when the business was picking up fast,
Mount Pinatubo erupted. The lahar that it unleashed
wreaked havoc in Porac and damaged their meat factory. At that time, Adrian, Pruds and Lito Garcia were
already living and working abroad. The eldest, Adrian, had settled in the United States. Pruds and Lito
had well-established careers as accountants in Saudi Arabia.
But the sons heeded their father’s summons. They
came back home and helped the company recover
from the disaster. With the revival of Mekeni Food,
the Garcia family was able to generate more jobs for
CONTACT DETAILS
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n running a business,
nothing is as
valuable as first-hand
experience and the knowhow, Prudencio Garcia of
Mekeni Food says.
“We learned by
working with our
parents,” Prudencio
explains. “We also
obtained the proper
education for the
business. Three of us are
graduates of business
administration; the
eldest, of animal science;
and the youngest, of
marketing.”
He adds: “Given our
experience and education,
we understand the nature
of the business very well.
Of course, our individual
experience in working
outside the country and in
dealing with multinationals
also helped. And when the
challenges come, we solve
them together one at a
time.”
their townmates and other fellow Pampangueños. Today, from only 30 employees when it started, Mekeni
Food now employs over 700 people.
During the last few years, Tatang Felix, 81, and
Imang Meding, 78, had gradually handed over the reins
of Mekeni Food to their sons. Prudencio is now its president, Adriano its vice president for engineering, Angelito its vice president for finance and administration,
Diosdado its vice president for plant operation, and
Nardo its vice president for sales and marketing.
In 2001, with loan assistance from the Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP), the Garcia family ventured into a major expansion program for Mekeni Food, building an ultramodern meat processing
plant, purchasing more equipment, and diversifying
into more meat products. With their stronger focus
on quality, the plant obtained international certification for its processes and reaped consumer awards at
the same time.
“The foundation of this business is the family,” Prudencio says. “Without that strong foundation, the business would not have survived. And we have remained
focused on another vision for the business—we want to
help others. We were given the chance to do that and
we thank God we had accepted the challenge.” n
MEKENI FOOD CORP.
Main O�ce: Balubad, Porac, Pampanga • Telephone: (045) 458-0000; (02) 927-4692
E-mail: [email protected] • Website: www.mekeni.com
ALL IN THE FAMILY
Jose Miguel Geronimo
Gerry Geronimo
Productions
‘Now we can be watched by
Filipinos all over the world’
F
rom childhood all the way to his becoming a medical doctor, Jose Miguel Geronimo has been helping out in the family
business. This meant working alongside his mother and brother as crew for
Ating Alamin, his father Gerry Geronimo’s highly popular show on radio and later also on television. The
award-winning public service program—the longest
running agri-developmental and livelihood entrepreneur show in Philippine broadcasting history—teaches and promotes various agricultural businesses to the
general public.
“The show has been successful because we communicate directly to the grassroots,” the younger Geronimo explains. “Another reason is that there’s no politics involved.”
With continued viewer interest in Ating Alamin,
Geronimo decided to use technology to reach and
help even more people. In the 1990s, Gerry Geronimo Productions Inc. (GGPI) switched from linear
to nonlinear technology in editing its radio and TV
shows—making it among the very first in the industry to do so. This enabled the company to produce its
shows more efficiently as well as further increase their
viewer interest.
In 1996, Geronimo realized that the Internet would
be the next big thing in communication technology, so
he arranged for GGPI to have a website—again making the company among the very first in the Philippines to have one. “In fact, we were one of the first in
the world to have a website, so much so that we obtained lifetime free use of our domain name,” he says.
(These days, websites need to pay an annual fee to
maintain their domain name.)
With Ating Alamin having its
JOSE MIGUEL own website, people abroad could
GERONIMO:
now more easily and freely acAting Alamin
cess the show by e-mail or through
was among
Web postings. “My priority was to
‘the first in
get in touch with the overseas Filithe world
pino workers,” Geronimo explains.
to have a
“Many of them don’t know what
website.’
business to put up when they come back to the country. Through our website, we have made it easy for
them to directly ask us for ideas and for how-to’s on
particular businesses.”
In 2000, Geronimo partnered with
Mobile Arts Inc., a short-messaging services company, to make Ating Alamin also
accessible through text messaging. Thus
was “Text Ka Gerry” born, allowing people even in the country’s farthest provinces (who may not have Internet access but
have cellular phones) to download business how-to’s from Ating Alamin.
Through years of research and experience, GGPI has been able to put together a comprehensive list of entrepreneurial
and livelihood programs, all proven viable and requiring minimal capital. Today,
three times a week, the company holds
seminars on these various businesses, attracting as many as 80 participants. Some of its seminar packages come with on-the-job training at GGPI’s six-hectare demo farm in Lipa, Batangas.
In 2005, GGPI signed an agreement with television giant ABS-CBN to air Ating Alamin over The
Filipino Channel (TFC), the network’s overseas cable channel. “Now we can be watched by Filipinos all
over the world,” Geronimo says.
Over the years, GGPI has developed several livelihood teaching products for the general public. Among
them is the Ating Alamin Libro sa Video, which consists of instructional DVD tapes on various crops,
fishery, livestock, and home industries. Another is
the bimonthly Ating Alamin Gazette, which is sold in
leading bookstores in the Philippines as well as abroad
through TFC.
The surprising thing, says Geronimo, is that 60 percent of GGPI’s income comes from corporate advertising support. He sees this as a sure sign that public
service can be commercially viable. “This is perhaps
because we have gained enough expertise and credibility over the years to become a reputable institution
that’s worthy of support,” he says. n
CONTACT DETAILS
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T
aking advantage
of existing
and up-andcoming technology is a
major reason for Ating
Alamin’s success. Some
of the technologies
Jose Miguel Geronimo’s
company uses is worth
noting by entrepreneurs:
The Internet. A
business gains a lot
more credibility when
it has its own website.
It allows the venture’s
owners to promote their
products or services,
and helps lead to future
face-to-face meetings
where deals can be
sealed.
Text messaging. With
nearly every Filipino
having a mobile phone
or having the means
to buy one, promoting
the business is as easy
as sending an SMS to
multiple contacts.
Television. Cable TV, in
particular, has allowed
many companies to get
the word out on their
products or services,
whether through
traditional advertising or
through the numerous
infomercial channels on
regular cable.
Compact discs and
other storage media.
From company press kits
to instructional videos,
CDs are indispensable
promotional tools in
today’s wired world.
GG PRODUCTIONS INC.
10 Greenheights Ave., Greenheights Village, Sucat, Paranaque City
Telephones: (02) 826-2604; (02) 825-6162; (02) 825-6564; (02) 827-7454
Website: www.ggproductionsinc.com
ALL IN THE FAMILY
Loly and
Buzz Gomez
Philippine Treasures
‘I wanted to do
something from scratch, to
create with my hands’
n
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LOLY AND
BUZZ GOMEZ:
A patient
bank manager
helped the
couple secure
a loan, and
launch their
business bigtime.
P
T
did not grow as fast as
Treasures started
they expected. “During
small with only
the initial years, medyo
a P20,000 loan from
palpak [we bungled it
Loly Gomez’s father-in-
somewhat] because we
law. The Gomez couple
didn’t know anything
would then reinvest into
about exporting,” she
the business whatever
says.
they earned
he husband-and-wife team of Buzz and
Loly Gomez of Philippine Treasures has
been exporting home décor made from
leaves, twigs, feathers, and broken glass
for nearly 30 years now. Neither of them
had any prior business background, however. They
simply learned along the way how to do things.
As a young couple in the mid-1970s, they used to
make cured meat such as longanisa, tocino, and tapa at
home. The business did well by supplying big hotels
and schools in Baguio City with the products. Simply
by chance, however, Loly later got into another business: buying silver jewelry from nuns in the city and
sending the jewelry to the United States to be sold by
her brother there.
Both businesses did very well, but the time eventually came when the couple had to choose which one to
pursue for the long term. “It was very difficult to have
two totally different businesses,” Loly recalls.
The couple finally chose to focus on the silver-buying business. Their trade in silver products grew, enabling the Gomez couple to expand their operations
by putting up a stall at the Baguio City Market. They
also began to supply the then-US bases at Clark and
Subic with their products, from where some of the
pieces would end up being exported to the US. This
later gave them the idea of going into the export of
the silver products themselves.
hilippine
Loly also began to design such houseware as forks
and spoons, then to ask silversmiths to make them
for her. This went on until the mid-1980s, at which
time she had a change of mind. “Nagsawa na ako sa
silver [I got fed up with the silver business],” she recalls. “I wanted to do something from scratch, to create with my hands.”
Her inspiration to go into the home décor business
came from her experience every Christmas season.
Friends visiting their house in Baguio City would be so
impressed with her homemade décor that they would
sometimes ask her to sell pieces of it to them. That
gave Loly the idea of another
business: Christmas décor.
The couple started small
with the Christmas décor
business, making just a few
pieces at a time to sell to
friends. “They liked whatever we made so the products would be sold out before long,” she recalls.
Then sometime in 1980, the Gomez couple joined
a CITEM exhibition in Manila and put their Christmas décor on display for a bigger market. To their
surprise, they received so many orders and were suddenly faced with the problem of how to finance their
production.
One day, Loly recalls, they met a bank president by
chance and talked to him about their plans to go into
exports. The latter suggested that they should consider getting financing from his bank. So Loly, bringing
only a purchase order, went to the bank and asked for
a loan for almost P100,000.
“I thought the PO was enough,” she recalls, “but
to my embarrassment, the manager explained to me
that it wasn’t. He told me that there were several other requirements before you could get a loan and then
proceeded to show me how to prepare them.”
At first, Loly would not only design but also make
the Christmas décor products herself. She was even
CONTACT DETAILS
But the company has
from their
since overcome these
Christmas
hurdles. It now exports
décor sales.
to the US, Australia,
The
New Zealand, Japan,
business
Italy, Spain, Germany,
experienced
Switzerland, and the UK.
a lot of
It now also outsources
birthing
some of its production
pains and
requirements.
hesitant to hire someone to do the accounting for the
business. “I was so worried na baka hindi ko siya masuwelduhan [that I may not be able to pay her salary],” she says.
One of the company’s bestsellers is its Broken Glass
collection. The inspiration for it came to Loly when
her son Anton’s car window smashed when he shut
the car door. He was about to throw away the glass
but Loly, seeing the potential usefulness of the broken glass, stopped him from doing so.
Since then, Philippine Treasures has been making
various kinds of accessories made from broken glass,
eventually expanding its broken-glass product line to
architectural items like garden tables and windows.
Philippine Treasures remains focused on the export
market, but lately, it has begun to also set its sights
on the local market. Explains Loly: “We have started
making corporate and wedding giveaways and architectural items. The local market for them has grown,
especially in Manila.” n
PHILIPPINE TREASURES
Puso ng Baguio Building, Session Road, Baguio City • Telephones: (074) 443-3443; (074) 444-4444
Metro Manila o�ce: G/F Unit 2A Mile Long Center Amorsolo St., Legaspi Village, Makati City
Telephone: (02) 843-3369 • E-mail: [email protected], [email protected]
ALL IN THE FAMILY
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Mark
Gorriceta
H
Freska
‘We decided to fly in our
five starting staff members all
the way from Iloilo’
By Katrina Tan
W
hen Mark Gorriceta, now a
lawyer at 30, moved to Manila
for college in 1995, he couldn’t
find any authentic Ilonggo dishes around. He thus missed so
much such addictive Ilonggo dishes as La Paz batchoy
and pancit molo as well as the region’s various seafood
specialties. No longer able to hold back his craving, he
decided to put up his very own Ilonggo restaurant together with his then-girlfriend, Caroline Dizon, and
his sister, Pauline Banusing.
But it wasn’t really an altogether fanciful decision
on Gorriceta’s part. “My family has been in the food
industry since I was young,” he explains. “My mother,
Sandra Sarabia-Gomez, ran the biggest fast food chain
in Iloilo City—it was called ‘Try Me’—during the late
1980s and early ’90s. Pauline also owns a string of five
successful restaurants in Iloilo.”
He continues: “That time, we wanted to open a cozy,
family-friendly restaurant where Manileños can enjoy
an authentic Ilonggo dining experience. We also decided to focus on seafood dishes popular in the Visayas,
particularly the managat [Visayan mangrove snapper],
oysters, and scallops.”
The partners decided to call the restaurant Freska, a name adapted from the Hiligaynon word “priska,” which means fresh. They then invested P400,000
from their savings for a stall-type outlet at Tiendesitas
in Frontera Verde, Pasig City.
MARK GORRICETA:
Proper time
management and
delegation have proved
essential to this
lawyer-entrepreneur.
“Planning took us only about three months because
my sister Pauline was already experienced in the business,” Gorriceta recalls. “Then we started buying second-hand kitchen equipment and went to the cheapest places for other items. Since our top priority was to
make the food truly exceptional and truly Ilonggo, we
decided to fly in our five starting staff members all the
way from Iloilo.”
Freska Restaurant, which opened in October 2005,
proved to be such a success that the partners recovered
their investment in just three months. Freska’s signature
dish, then as now, was tender grilled managat with a sid-
ing of pickled radish. The restaurant also served
such specialty seafood dishes as grilled scallops
with lemon butter sauce, baked oysters with two
cheeses, and sizzling stuffed giant squid, and also
such nonseafood dishes as chicken inasal, kadios baboy langka, and
pancit molo.
“Our foodstuffs are delivered
fresh from Iloilo to Manila on
a daily basis, and our prices are
reasonable,” says Gorriceta. “You
can have a complete meal with a
drink for under P200, and we regularly come up with monthly promos and gimmicks
for our customers.”
With their Tiendesitas 45-seat stall usually filled to capacity, the Gorricetas were able to raise money to put up
their first stand-alone Freska restaurant along Katipunan
Avenue in Quezon City. It opened in September 2006, or
barely a year later. Says Gorriceta: “Caroline and I simultaneously planned the opening of that second branch and
our wedding. We got married in January 2007.”
The Freska restaurant on Katipunan Avenue has an
indoor air-conditioned area that seats 90 and an openair area that seats another 30. Its compound now also
houses the company’s central commissary, main office,
stockroom, and garage for delivery trucks.
CONTACT DETAILS
aving a full-time job is many times a
challenge for would-be entrepreneurs.
But with proper time management and
delegation, Freska co-owner Mark Gorriceta says,
one can do both.
“When I’m at the law office, I make the most
of my time,” he says. “I also spend my evenings
checking our different stores. I believe there’s always
time for everything, even for leisure.”
The main operational concerns of the partners
are to ensure that the restaurant’s quality standards
are met on a day-to-day
basis and that its high level
of service is maintained at
all times. Actual monitoring
is carried out by Freska’s
supervisors and area
managers.
“We have learned
the importance of hiring
the best people in the
industry,” Gorriceta says.
“It greatly helps to develop
your brand and create a
consistent image for it. Freska is authentic Ilonggo
dining and we are sticking to that.”
The Gorricetas opened a third Freska restaurant a
year later at the Promenade Mall in Greenhills, San
Juan City branch. The outlet is slightly smaller than
the one on Katipunan Avenue. They also opened a 70seater restaurant in their hometown of Smallville, Iloilo in February 2008.
“Our plan is to continue expanding our casual dining and full service restaurants,” Gorriceta says. “We
will open two to three more Freska outlets every year
in major malls, including Powerplant, the SM chain,
and TriNoma. We will likewise develop our food stalls
business under the Freska-Express brand and penetrate
the food courts of malls.” n
FRESKA
Katipunan Avenue, Blue Ridge, Quezon City; 2L EDSA Arcade, EDSA Mandaluyong City
Telephone: (02) 438-6785534-7898 • Website: www.freskagroup.com
Email: [email protected]
ALL IN THE FAMILY
Teresa and
Francis Guanzon
Bangko Kabayan
‘We have a social goal to spur
development in the countryside’
By Nanci Locsin
I
Photo by Jun Pinzon
baan in Batangas is a trading town where
selling is a major source of livelihood. “This
is why we have a lot of peddlers here,” says
Teresa M. Ganzon, managing director of
Bangko Kabayan Inc. (BK), which is based
in the town.“Capital plays a big role in the selling
business, and my father, being an entrepreneur, had
clearly seen this.”
Indeed, this was why her father, Bienvenido M.
Medrano, and her maternal grandfather, Manuel M.
Agregado, established the Ibaan Rural Bank Inc.
way back in 1957. The forerunner of the presentday Bangko Kabayan Inc., the Ibaan Rural Bank had
made it its objective to provide reasonably priced
credit particularly to the community’s small merchants, farmers, and traders.
In 1977, however, Bangko Kabayan went through
a financial crisis that forced Ganzon and her husband Francis to get deeply involved in its operations.
It took the couple almost nine years to turn the bank
around. But then, in 1989, Ganzon’s father ultimately decided to sell his interest in the bank.
“At this point, my husband and I offered to buy
out the rest of the family’s share in the bank,” Ganzon recalls. “Our offer was accepted and this gave
us the freedom to pursue the vision that we had for
Bangko Kabayan.”
That vision, then as now, is to make Bangko
Kabayan a leading rural financial institution that
FRANCIS AND TERESA GUANZON: Bangko
Kabayan designs its products according to the
principles of ‘economy of communion.’
“fosters God’s presence in the community” by efficiently delivering personalized financial services to
small and micro entrepreneurs in Batangas.
Ganzon explains: “As a rural bank, we have a
social goal to spur development in the countryside.
While some entrepreneurs aim only to achieve their
business objective, we at Bangko Kabayan have
made it a point to go further down to the rural areas that we are servicing. We have made it our main
objective to serve the poor.”
This goal was inspired by the “Economy of Communion,” a project conceptualized by Chiara Lubich, the Italian founder of the Focolare Movement,
an international religious organization of which the
Ganzon couple are members. Through the “Economy of Communion” project, Focolare challenges
its entrepreneur-members to carry out this vision
by helping the poor until they can fend for themselves and are no longer in dire need.
The couple anchored Bangko Kabayan on this
philosophy, designing its deposit products, loan
products, and microfinance services to inculcate
the value of savings and promote entrepreneurship
among the poor.
An initial deposit of only P100 is required to
open a BK interest-earning savings account. To convert it into a current account, the depositor simply
needs to deposit an additional P5,000; this current
account is interest-bearing and can be monitored
through a passbook. Time deposits in BK have a
minimum term of 90 days, and require a minimum
placement of P10,000.
Among Bangko Kabayan’s major microfinance
offerings is the Kabayan loan, an individual lending program that caters to SMEs, providing them
with working capital and facilitating their acquisition of fixed assets.
Another major BK microfinance offering is the
Kapitan loan, a group lending program for women in the rural areas. Aside from lending, this program facilitates seminars and discussions on credit
management and discipline, business management,
health care, leadership, and values formation.
CONTACT DETAILS
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angko
Kabayan’s
success proves
that helping the poor
can be profitable as
well. Entrepreneurs
interested in going
into rural banking
should therefore
consider replicating
BK’s loan offerings
for such agriculture
development
activities as
cultivating,
developing, and
improving agricultural
land; raising poultry
and livestock; and
developing fishponds.
Like BK, they can also
offer development
incentive loans
to educational
establishments,
finance cooperatives,
hospitals, and
medical services
establishments.
Other services
they can offer to
small and medium
enterprises (SMEs)
are holdout loans
backed up by the
borrower’s deposit as
well as salary loans,
car loans, house
loans, and pensioner’s
loans.
These microfinance programs began in 1996
when Bangko Kabayan established its social development foundation. Four years later, the bank offered them as regular bank products to a clientele
that had by then grown to 500 borrowers. From
that time onwards, this number has further grown
to 8,000.
Today, BK has a total of 11 branches in Batangas—
in Batangas City, Calaca, Cuenca, Ibaan, Lemery,
Mabini, Nasugbu, Rosario, San Jose, San Juan, and
San Pascual. With current resources totaling over P1
billion, it services more than 50,000 clients.
For its rural banking performance, BK has received various awards—including five Eagle Awards
from the Rural Banking Association of the Philippines for excellent performance in managing microfinance operations—and currently ranks among
the top 3 percent of all rural banks in the Philippines. n
BANGKO KABAYAN INC.
Address: Poblacion, Ibaan, Batangas
Telephones / Fax: (043) 311-1152; (043) 311-1323; (043) 311-1814; (043) 311-1420
Website: www.bangkokabayan.com
ALL IN THE FAMILY
Jaafar sisters
The 50th Avenue
The growth of a business ‘starts
from the personal touch’
By Miki Espe
A
ll dayangs or Muslim princesses, the Jaafar sisters Soraya, Faricia, Aisha, Fatima,
Janette, and Jihan have stepped out of
the confines and comforts of royalty to
go into business on their own.
The six independent-minded women are daughters of Rep. Nur G. Jaafar, representative of the lone
district of Tawi-Tawi and a datu who belongs to the
noble lineage of the Sultanate of Sulu. Theirs is a
family of politicians, but the sisters have all chosen
not to follow in their father’s footsteps, jointly going into trading and retailing instead.
In 2000, they initially put up
a clothing shop named Sleek Av- JAAFAR SISTERS
enue at the Greenhills Shopping (from le�) D.
Center in San Juan City, follow- Soraya Jaafaring it up a year later with Tele- Golez, D. Jihan
com World at Robinsons Place Jaafar, D. Faricia
Jaafar, D. Aisha
Ermita, a much bigger store that
Jaafar and D.
specializes in retail sales and re- Fatima Jaafar:
pairs of cellular phone units and All self-confessed
their accessories.
hands-on
Two years after that, in 2002, entrepreneurs.
they put up a salon, C & C (Cups and Capuccino), at
Robinsons Galleria on Ortigas Avenue corner EDSA
in Quezon City. This became the precursor of an even
more ambitious entrepreneurial venture that they were
to open in the same mall that same year—The 50th
Avenue, a one-stop shopping area that houses independent outlets offering specialty coffee (a franchised
Figaro outlet), apparel and accessories, shoes, clothes
alteration, and even a nail spa.
Drawing inspiration from stores in Europe, The
50th Avenue sports an open-air atmosphere with
brick walls and street lamps as accents. A coffee shop
sits at its center, with a special concierge to attend to
customers’ queries. Altogether, the place exudes an
out-of-the-country feel like that of an idyllic piazza—
a concept that the Jaafar sisters had drawn from their
travels and shopping sprees abroad.
The 50th Avenue has a specialty shop for the
needs of most everybody in the A, B, and C market
segments. When one needs a new bikini to sport at
the beach, for instance, there’s Lae Clothing. When
one has a craving for new clothes, there’s Preview or
Shang. And when one need accents for one’s wardrobe, there’s Girl Shoppe.
The sisters, drawing from the earnings of their other businesses and from their personal savings, initially invested P5 million in The 50th Avenue. It went
largely into construction, not on store equipment, because the primary objective of the business is to provide space for tenants with unique specialty goods.
Fil-Asia Concepts Inc., a micro retail lease management company that the Jafaar sisters had put up, runs
The 50th Avenue. It occupies a 1,000 sq m area that
holds more or less 50 stores. Starting with only 10 workers, it now has 70 workers, having also opened a branch
at the Alabang Town Center in Muntinlupa City.
All self-confessed hands-on entrepreneurs, the Jaafar sisters visit their stores almost every day. Says Fatima: “We even come to work on weekends to see what’s
going on. It somehow eats up our time, but since we
are fond of the business, it seems like we’re actually
not working at all.” Aisha adds: “The personal touch
must be always present in a business because its growth
CONTACT DETAILS
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lthough theirs
is a family
business, the
Jaafar sisters strictly
adhere to company
policy and exercise
teamwork in managing
it. Soraya Jaafar-Golez
is the president and
CEO, Faricia Jaafar
the VP for finance and
administration, Asiaha
Jaafar the VP for
marketing, Fatima Jaafar
the general manager of
the franchised Figaro
outlet, Janette JaafarFelizardo the concepts
and design manager,
and Jihan Jaafar the
marketing officer.
As VP for marketing,
Aisha ensures
adherence to their
marketing strategy
of keeping The 50th
Avenue as a piazza-like
umbrella store that
sells nothing but unique
goods positioned in a
prime location. Several
young entrepreneurs
who used to do their
business in bazaars have
signed up as tenants of
the one-stop shopping
area. Each had met the
company’s requirement
of having a business
idea that meshes well
with The 50th Avenue’s
overall concept.
starts from there. You should know and learn what
your people are doing and there should be a commitment—a commitment in both energy and time—in
everything that you do.”
The six royal princesses, who have been steadily
expanding The 50th Avenue ever since, expect to recover their initial investment in the business within
two years. From all indications, they have truly found
their niche in micro retailing. n
FIL-ASIA CONCEPTS INC.
20th Floor 2009-2010 Robinsons Equitable Tower, Ortigas, Pasig City
Telephones: (02) 635-3313; (02) 687-3445 • Fax: (02) 638-6077
THE 50TH AVENUE • Telephones: (02) 635-6489; (02) 683-0575
ALL IN THE FAMILY
Sheila and
Bertrand
Pesayco
Writer’s Edge
Leaving their ‘regular jobs’
allowed this couple to finally have
control over their time.
By Maan D’Asis Pamaran
W
riter’s Edge, an agency that provides media content for client companies, got conceived
by a couple in 2002 in—where
else?—their bed in their own
bedroom. How they did it isn’t what you might be
thinking, though. Sheila Pesayco, who runs Writer’s
Edge with her husband Bertrand, recalls: “We were
then playing Scrabble and he was taking so long to
take his turn, so I told him we might as well brainstorm for business ideas.”
At that time Sheila was trying to convince Bertrand to quit his communications job with the Lopez
Group: “He was so burned out with the work so I was
quite concerned. I also saw that it depressed him seeing me so excited with my new line of work.”
Sheila had by then left her banking section editor’s
post at the newspaper BusinessWorld and was working
part-time with the Philippine Center for Investigative
Journalism (PCIJ) while also doing consultancy work
with the Ford Foundation. “I was really glad with my
decision to leave newspapering because it meant that
I finally had control of my own time,” she says. In her
former job, she explains, she always had to work ear-
ly and leave late, even on Sundays.
The couple’s brainstorming in bed led to a major
decision: they would both pursue writing as a fulltime business. “We decided to build a business based
on our skills,” Sheila says. “Because both of us had a
professional background in communications, we felt
that professional writing was something that we both
knew about.”
But although Writer’s Edge was conceived almost
effortlessly, its birthing pains were quite traumatic. “At
the outset we decided to do everything legally, without making any lagay [red tape payoffs],” Bertrand recalls. “In the end, it took us four months just to get our
city government permits and clearances. And because
we didn’t hand over any money under the table, everybody came to inspect us—even fire marshals who
wanted to sell fire extinguishers to us!”
On the plus side, the couple needed only a small
initial investment. “We invested only around P60,000
for a Macintosh computer and the peripherals,” says
Sheila. “And we decided to work in a home office to
keep our overhead low.”
They also kept their manpower flexible. Sheila explains: “There are only four of us who are regular employees—Bertrand, me, an administrative staff, and
a messenger. For each project, we just get extra help
from our pool of talents.”
No project was too big or too small for the couple
during their startup years. Recalls Sheila: “Our first
project was a souvenir program for an NGO called
Galing Pook for distribution in Malacañang, the next
was a Christmas wrapper for Universal Motors, then
a book for SGV (SyCip, Gorres, Velayo & Co.), and
a brochure for a multiple intelligence center put up in
a school adopted by HSBC.”
They depended solely on referrals from satisfied
clients to make the business grow. “We didn’t advertise at all,” Sheila says. “Everything
SHEILA AND was by word of mouth. When we got
BERTRAND
a client, they often also got us for anPESAYCO:
other project, or refer us to anoth‘Professional er group that needed some editoriwriting was
al work done.”
something
Currently, Writer’s Edge offers
that we both
such
communication services as
knew about.’
newsletters, brochures, annual reports, research studies, corporate logos and stationery,
audio-visual presentations, Web publishing, press dispatches—even CEO speeches, which, Sheila says, is
one of Bertrand’s strengths.
In the beginning, Sheila admits, Writer’s Edge took
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lexibility is
the name
of the game
for Writer’s Edge.
Its services are
customized and it
doesn’t charge a fixed
rate for projects.
To keep itself
lean and mean, the
company uses a wide
pool of freelance
writers, artists, and
photographers. And
to ensure quality
printing work for its
clients, it has formed
partnerships with
various printing press
companies.
on practically every kind of work that came its way.
“But now we are more selective,” she says, “and we even
do pro bono work for such good causes as Caritas Manila. This time, before a company can be our regular
client, we have to believe in its product.” n
WRITERS EDGE INC.
Telephones: (02) 824-1907; (02) 821-3897
Website: www.writersedgeinc.com
ALL IN THE FAMILY
SOCORRO
RAMOS with
granddaughter
TRINA LICAUCOALINDOGAN:
‘Cooperation,
love and respect
for each other’s
opinion are the
ingredients to
the vitality of
our business.’
Socorro Ramos and Family
National Bookstore
‘If we don’t get the best price,
we can’t sell for the best price’
By Carla Paras-Sison
Photo by Jun Pinzon
T
he remarkable success of National Book
Store Inc. (NBSI) is founded on three
abiding attributes of the Ramos family:
mutual respect, cooperation, and simple living. As a result, what was once
a hole-in-the-wall book and school supplies stand in
Manila in 1942 is now the biggest bookstore chain in
the Philippines, with over 80 branches nationwide
and a workforce of 2,500.
Says Cecilia Ramos-Licauco, the company’s vicepresident for purchasing and youngest child of So-
corro Cancio-Ramos, its founder and general manager: “Nanay taught us to be frugal, to avoid wastage and
unnecessary expenses. There’s this constant reminder
to cut cost, to get the best price. Because if we don’t
get the best price, she maintains, we can’t sell for the
best price. NBSI never wants to be expensive.”
Although close-knit, the Ramoses don’t take expensive annual vacations nor do they go on foreign
cruises as a family. Their reunions are simple lunches
or dinners to celebrate special occasions like Christmas, All Saints’ Day, birthdays, and the death anniversary of Jose Ramos, the late patriarch.
The one time the Ramoses did go on foreign vacation together was when Mrs. Ramos won the 2004
Ernst & Young “Entrepreneur of the Year Philippines”
award and became the Philippines’ bet in the “World
Entrepreneur of the Year” finals in Monaco. “I got to
go for free, representing the Philippines, but everybody
else had to pay their way,” recalls Mrs. Ramos, who is
fondly called Nanay Coring by her staff (“Nanay” is
Tagalog for “mother”).
So it helps for the penny-pinching Ramos matriarch to have a small clan of only about 25 members
all the way to the fourth generation.
Her eldest child, Alfred Ramos, is now president of
NBSI, assisted by two area vice-presidents: Alfred’s twin
Benjamin and Alfred’s wife Presentacion, nee Sunico.
The following children of Ramos-Licauco are active in the business: Ramon Licauco is NBSI information technology manager, Trina Licauco-Alindogan is
NBSI operations and human resources manager, and
Gabriel Licauco is operations manager of Powerbooks
Inc., a wholly owned NBSI subsidiary.
Ramos-Licauco says exposure to the NBSI business
at an early age naturally influenced their decision to
join it. She recalls: “We grew up with it. Being with
the family business is like eating, drinking, sleeping. I
was still in grade school, maybe in the third or fourth
grade, when I started manning the cash register at our
store along Rizal Avenue in Manila. We loved those
days—coming home from school, being cashier for a
little time and then taking merienda [snacks].”
Nanay Coring explains: “It’s the influence of the
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ricia LicaucoAlindogan
of National
Book Store says
that the family’s
third generation
appreciates the
respect their parents
and grandmother give
them.
She explains:
“Respect is important.
The older generation
recognizes that the
younger generation has
ideas, and we recognize
that our elders have the
experience. Sometimes,
it’s just that the time
is not right for some
of our ideas, so we
understand why some
of our proposals aren’t
approved, and why our
elders sometimes don’t
agree with us.”
Nanay Coring,
on the other
hand, emphasizes:
“Cooperation, love,
respect for each other’s
opinion—these are
the ingredients of the
vitality of our business.
I understand that the
younger generation is
better educated, and I
can see that they work
hard and understand
the business. So the
important thing is
to listen to them so
their ideas can be
incorporated in the
decisions. Anyway,
if we make a wrong
choice and reject
their suggestion in
the beginning, we can
always go back to their
idea and consider doing
it the next time.”
environment. They could see me doing all the aspects
of the business. Our family lunches and dinners would
always have the business as our topic. Our mealtime
discussions would include which shoplifter was caught
in which branch, what’s the latest on the bestseller
list—things like those.”
Despite having no family constitution and no written guidelines for settling disputes and claims, Nanay
Coring has never been fazed by the dynamics of managing such a large corporation in which family members
hold key management positions. Indeed, she and the
two women from the three Ramos generations—Cecilia
Ramos-Licauco and Trina Licauco-Alindogan—actually look forward to NBSI’s continuing growth and expansion given these organizational dynamics. n
NATIONAL BOOK STORE INC.
125 Quad Alpha Centrum Building, Pioneer Street, 1550 Mandaluyong City
Telephone: (02) 631-5363 • Fax: (02) 631-5016 • Website: www.nationalbookstore.com.ph
ALL IN THE FAMILY
Flor and Susan Velasco
Flor-San’s
A persistent foreign buyer
provided this couple the money
to jumpstart their business.
By Tino Pamintuan
E
very time the cargo ship’s foreign captain wanted to assert his authority over
the Filipino members of his crew, he
would yell at them: “I’ll send you back
to the Philippines!” Among the crew
was 30-year-old seaman Florentino “Flor” Velasco,
who recalls that he was always irked by that threat.
“The captain would do this because he thought
that most Filipinos were dirt poor and had nothing
awaiting them back home,” he says. Nevertheless, not
allowing himself to be cowed by the threat, he would
answer the captain back: “So send me home! I want
to go back to the Philippines anyway!”
True enough, he had been thinking about going
home for good so he could be with his family. He wanted to help his wife Susan grow her startup handicraft
business. However, since he had a nine-month contract with the shipping company, he had to stay on until November of 1989. By then he would have worked
on foreign cargo ships intermittently for four years.
“I left the Philippines in June 1985 to work as a
seaman just six months after Susan and I got mar-
ried,” Velasco says. He had trained to be a ship captain, obtaining his Bachelor of Science degree in marine transportation from the Philippine Merchant
Marine Academy in 1982.
While he was working as a seaman, Susan worked
as a contractual employee in a municipal treasurer’s
office, collecting payments for business permits. She
was also helping her elder sister Beatriz Cadang in
a handicraft business, assisting her in the hiring of
workers to carve wooden ducks and deliver them to
customers in Metro Manila. Susan learned the business herself, after which she decided to go on her
own and later quit her job at the municipal treasurer’s office.
In 1986, the Velasco couple put up Flor-San’s
Handicraft with an initial capital of P3,000. “We
were able to raise that amount from my monthly pay
as a seaman, which was US$400,” he says.
The company started with only four employees
but in just 12 months, Flor-San’s had already recovered its initial investment, mainly by selling painted
wooden ducks. The wooden ducks, made from hardwood found in the forests of Paete and sculptured and
painted with antique finish by
FLOR and SUSAN
Paete craftsmen, attracted a
VELASCO: ‘We are good number of foreign buynot about to give
ers. Among them was Gerald
up because this
Heinen, a native of Holland
is a business we
who had eventually made the
have nurtured for
Philippines his home.
20 years.’
“He liked our painted
wooden ducks; in fact, he ordered 10,000 pieces
worth P400,000 from us in 1987 for export to Europe,” says Velasco. “But we told him we couldn’t
produce and supply such a huge order because we
didn’t have the capital, the manpower, and the
equipment.”
But Heinen was persistent and struck a deal with
the Velasco couple: they supply the ducks, and he
would lend them P100,000 without interest to buy
wood, acquire sawing and carving tools, hire more
workers, and put up a workshop.
“That thing seldom happens,” recalls Susan. “He
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t one point in
the early 1990s,
the growing
foreign orders to FlorSan’s Handicraft became
too burdensome for
the Velasco couple to
finance.
“This was when we
learned about the export
facility being provided
by the Land Bank of
the Philippines (LBP)
to small- and mediumsized exporters,” Velasco
recalls. “We got our
first loan of P1.8 million
and later P2.3 million to
cover at least 80 percent
of our letters of credit.
That enabled us to bring
our export products to
many more parts of the
world.”
But running FlorSan’s has never been
easy, particularly in
recent months when
the value of the peso
against the US dollar
has been very volatile.
There is also the
increasing competition
from handicraft makers
of China and Vietnam.
Still, the Velascos are
undaunted.
“We are not about
to give up because this
is a business that we
have nurtured for more
than 20 years,” says Flor.
“More importantly, this is
our source of livelihood.
It enables us to send our
seven children to school.
Our hundreds of workers
also depend on it.”
trusted us to make and deliver the painted wooden
ducks, and we were able to do so because we worked
doubly hard for it. After just a year, we were able to
pay him back the P100,000.”
In 1989, Velasco finished his last contract on
board a ship, and joined his wife full time in running
the business. In the early 1990s, however, Flor-San’s
stopped making wooden ducks because of government restrictions on the use of hardwood and forest
products, In their place, the company then shifted to
products made of driftwood, paper, capiz, and resin.
Flor-San’s now has an 800 sq m factory in Paete
that employs more than 100 workers. Among the
products the company produces today are ethnic
woodcarvings; planters, topiaries and bird cages;
gift items; and home and holiday décor such as mirrors, vases, boxes, Christmas tree ornaments, and
Easter eggs. ■
FLOR-SAN’S HANDICRAFT
Manila East Road Highway, Paete, Laguna • Telephone: (049) 557-1033 • Fax: (049) 557-0892
E-mail: fl[email protected], [email protected] • Website: www.florsan.net
ALL IN THE FAMILY
Reynaldo and
Leticia Vergara
RL Vercons Merchants
This countryside business is
not afraid to use technology
By Rafael Santos
I
n the early 1990s, when their agribusiness venture hit a rough patch,
the husband and wife team of Reynaldo and Leticia Vergara took the bold
gamble of putting up a supermarket in
Dinalupihan, Bataan.
But the couple recalls that the reception
accorded by their prospective market to their
new business was lukewarm at first: “People
were afraid of our self-service type outlet because they were so used to doing over-thecounter transactions. Some of them would
even remove their footwear when they entered our store.”
But now, 18 years later, Vergara Supermarket, the neighborhood grocery store that the
couple had put up, enjoys
such a big following that it
has become one of the better-known retail names in
Bataan and Zambales. The
couple’s holding company, RL Vercons Merchants
Corp., now runs two other
supermarkets, two department stores, a bakeshop,
and a trading company
within Bataan and at the
Subic Bay Freeport Zone
in Zambales.
The couple credits their
honest and efficient service
for the success of their various businesses. Says Reynaldo: “We have made it a
policy to be always fair to
our customers: fair in our
service, and fair in our pricing. And we only sell highquality goods, even to the
point of not carrying the
cheapest brands.”
Vercons’ use of a computerized point of sale
(POS) system has proved
to be such a big boon to
their expanding retail busiThe lukewarm
reception the
ness. It has made the monVergaras initially
itoring and control of the
received from their
over-the-counter transaccustomers was
tions of the outlets much
overcome by their
more manageable.
honest and e�cient
service.
“Before, I used to run the
counter myself and would punch in the items one by one,”
Leticia recalls. “But as we grew and the number of brands
we were carrying ballooned, we realized we had to upgrade our systems to better manage consumer traffic.”
More recently, the company centralized product
distribution to all of its branches to ensure the system-
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esearch is a very
crucial aspect
of putting up or
expanding a business,
according to Reynaldo
and Leticia Vergara of RL
Vercons Merchants Corp
They explain why:
“Before we start
constructing or leasing
a commercial space to
house our stores, we
make sure to do some
research first about
our target market. We
figure out its various
nuances; for instance,
we learned that there
are very significant
differences between
city shoppers and
small-town shoppers.
Then we use the data
we have collected as
inputs for doing the
layout of our store and
for determining the best
product mix for it.”
atic, efficient, and timely delivery of merchandise.
“We started implementing our centralized inventory and logistics system in late 2007,” says Reynaldo. “We did it to have better control of our deliveries from point of origin all the way to our retail stores.
This way, we are able to monitor the movement of our
merchandise more efficiently and minimize shortages
at the outlet level.”
Due to strong consumer demand for food and nonfood items, the Vergaras expect sales of their retail outlets to remain brisk, and they plan to open one more
retail outlet within the year to better serve their evergrowing clientele. n
RL VERCONS MERCHANTS CORP.
San Ramon National Hi-way, Dinalupihan, Bataan
Telephone: (047) 481-5676 • Fax: (047) 481-5401 • E-mail: [email protected]

Bookazine 08 Cover 2 (fin).

Transcription

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