I met Joey Concepcion in 1982. I was a 20-year old fresh graduate working in the brand management division of RFM co-owned by his family. He was working there a year ahead of me as promotions manager. I remember hitching a ride with him during some of our Cabuyao plant meetings. I decided to be an entrepreneur in 1985. Tony […]
Articles
Many people want to have their own business but lack the capital. The Duterte government wants to push for more businesses. In fact, the new Secretary of Trade and Industry (DTI) Ramon Lopez wants malls and major chain stores to allocate free space to SMEs to give them a fighting chance to grow. A practical way to be an entrepreneur […]
There was a viral video of the Breeze detergent experiment showing mothers’ reactions upon seeing their children all dirty and muddy after school. As expected, most of the moms were shocked, surprised, maybe even annoyed as they asked questions that seemed to assume the worst about their children’s behavior: “What did you do (this time)? / Where did you play […]
The concept of Logic of Industry has taught us that in every industry, there are rules. Ignore them and you risk not becoming successful. This concept is especially popular when senior executives mentor younger people on how to succeed in an industry. Many share so-called success formulas, but in reality, these are only indicators. If these so-called formulas would be […]
Mercury Drug, the leading drugstore chain in the Philippines has a free and transferable customer loyalty program known as Suki (regular customers) Card. Launched in 2001, a portion of the amount spent is stored in the customer’s Suki Card for them to buy products in the ‘future’. Ms. Cora Lim, a top executive of Mercury Drug described the Suki Card […]
Most government services are monopoly in nature and some of the ways to provide greater customer satisfaction are usually as follows: A) Adopt customer satisfaction ratings from customers (not just supervisors) as basis for performance evaluation, merit increase, promotion and retention; B) Hire amiable people with proactive service attitude; C) Appoint a leader to champion a customer-centric mindset; and D) […]
For our annual outing in 2016, the staff of Mansmith and Fielders Inc. have chosen to go to Las Casas Filipinas de Acuzar in Bagac, Bataan. (Photo credit Tessa Gayanes) Initially, I wondered why they have chosen to travel over three hours from Manila as I did not have the time to read about our destination prior to visiting […]
Stripe allows web developers to embed a web payment service in about five minutes, making it as easy as embedding a YouTube video. Founded by two Irish college dropouts, brothers Patrick and John Collison, who have since moved to Silicon Valley, their early investors include the founders of a competing company, PayPal, Peter Thiel and Elon Musk. Stripe is disrupting […]
Waters Philippines is market leader in home water purifiers in the Philippines. Launched in 1995 as the first consumer durable network marketing company in the Philippines, it struggled in the initial years with the need to educate sellers on the difference between network marketing (also known as MLM or multi-level marketing) versus illegal pyramiding, as well as the culture difference between a […]
When Chiqui and I became a couple back in college in the 80s, Chinese-Filipino relationships were not the norm due to perceived cultural differences. Chiqui is a Filipino and I am Chinese-Filipino, something that might not matter now as much as it did then. We have been together for over 30 years and maybe our example of a relationship originally […]