Successful Stories of Filipino Entrepreneurs

Prepared by: Cruz, Astergene Paolo Q.

JULIES BAKESHOP
y Julie Gandionco, the owner of the business, at the age of 47,

her duties as mother becomes less demanding. Her sons educational expenses were going up and the sugar farm of her husband is not doing well. She thought then that she had to do something to help her husband.

Opportunity
y She applied and got the contract as a canteen concessionaire

at PHILDACAN, a rattan factory. After a year, Admacor, PHILDACANs sister company, she was offered to run it. Another year passed, she was also offered with La Union Carbide factory.

y Julie noticed that most of his customers consume bread

which she bought from different bakeries during that time. Vicente Ruiz, one of her bread suppliers, encouraged her to open her own bakery business to meet her needs. It was an opportunity since there is already market but she was hesitant because she have no experience in baking or bakeshop business.

y In the end, she took Vicentes advice on the condition that he

joins her business and take care of all the baking while she took care of the rest. y Julie put up her savings, P19,000 and opened the first bakeshop on January 6,1981 in Wireless, Mandaue. After six months, she opened another shop at Aznar road, near Southwestern University . She recovered her investment after one year.

Success in Mango Farming

y Lito Arenas, after finishing her nursing course, returned to

his hometown in Manaoag, Pangasinan to pursue something closer to his heart, raising mangoes. y When he was still a kid, he was tasked to cut grasses, also in picking and cleaning the mangoes. He was also tasked in selling the mangoes after hi classes.

y With his love and familiarity with the field, he choose to be

in the mango trading. He buy and sell mangoes with a capital of P2,500. y He was not contented with just trading them. He wants to grow them. As far as Batac, Ilocos Norte, he searched for the best mangoes to grow in his three hectare land in Manaoag y He got the help of Department of Agriculture to get financial support with his frustrations such as the high cost of fertilizers and others.

y For him to become more informed, he attended several trainings

about mango growing and the industry. He also honed his entrepreneurial skills through thee trainings. y He was also able to set up his own manufacturing plant for dried mangoes which is delivered domestic and export markets. y He was able to provide 200 Manaoag residents with employment. y He is now in partnership with the DA, Bureau of Plant Industry and UPLB Institute of Plant Breeding with the help of his wife.

Level Up!
y Level Up! is the company behind the successful online game y y y y

Ragnarok. It is being runned by father and son Nonoy and Ben Colayco. Nonoy Colayco has been in the fields of finance, investments and funds management. Ben Colayco took Politacal science at New York University and decided to take law proper. Nonoy is having doubts if Ben really wanted to pursue law so he advised him to take a break for one year and decide whether to take law or not.

y Ben took his fathers advice. . He joined Grey Advertising and

got his first marketing experience. While in Grey, Ben learned how to come up with advertising campaigns for detergent brands. After a year, Ben was no longer interested in pursuing a law degree. He decided to take a MBA degree. He said his plans to his father. Nonoy told him he wont pay for it and encouraged him to go back to Philippines for a new project. Ben quit hi MBA plans and returned to the Philippines.

y During a business trip to Korea before, he smelled the

opportunity that online gaming had to offer. He met with his former AIG colleagues to explore the potential of online gaming here in the Philippines. He didnt know anything about video games and online gaming but he knew that Filipinos are fond of gaming.

y During those times, CounterStrike was the most popular

game. Wherein kids play against each other connected in a network. They decided to introduce a new kind of gaming, MMOG or Massively Multiplayer On-Line Games. The internet is growing fast and gaming is going towards that direction.

y However, Ben asked how they are going to monetize it? How

do they get people to pay for the games? For network gaming, it was easy you just pay the cashier of the gaming center or internet caf. But how would it be in the case of MMOGs? Anyone could virtually play anywhere with the use of the internet. So they thought that there should only be one center point of registration. And the only way to do it was for gamers to log-in and be required to pay before they play.

Marketing
y They didnt use the traditional way of marketing. Instead they

produce as many Ragnarok installations as they could. hey literally flooded the market with these CDs by giving them away. They gave it to publishers of local comic books and gaming magazines. They distributed them in anime, sci-fi and toy conventions. They sponsored proms and high school parties and they gave out these CDs. They connected with their target customers which are the youth. They made friends with the kids.

y Pretty soon, kids were hanging out in their office. They

developed street credibility by being one of them. It didnt take long before news about Ragnarok spread. Before they knew it, they already had around 20,000 subscribers. It was at that point that they knew they had accomplished something special. y They are eyeing now to expand in Brazil and India as potential markets.