BUSINESS BITS

Vizcaya furniture maker bags international award
Charlie Lagasca and Bridget Rabo Ng

BAYOMBONG, Nueva Vizcaya – Another Filipino has made it to the arena of global business excellence.

Reynaldo Agub Jr. has been asked time and again: How did a registered civil and geodetic engineer shift his life and career to being an entrepreneur and owner of a popular furniture store here, churning out world-class house furnishings?

He used to have difficulty explaining his career shift years ago when he started Reylen’s Furniture and Enterprises in the midst of a booming career as a civil and geodetic engineer.

But not, he finds it easier, not only because his prosperous furniture business has let him go places to represent the province. And in November he is bound for Madrid, Spain to personally receive the prestigious International Award for Execellence of Products and Services or the so-called New Millenium Award.

“Like everything in life, I don’t not like shoddily made products, so much so that I see to it that nothing less than the best craftsmanship goes into every product sold by Reylen’s Furniture and Enterprises. And I have been strict in maintaining the quality of our products through the years,” he said.

From an initial capital of only P50,000, word-of-mouth advertising and a “backyard clientele” 15 years ago, Reylen’s Furniture has grown into a more than P50-million enterprise, with its products now one of the most sought-after in the region.

As president of the Furniture Makers Association of Nueva Vizcaya, Agub has come to see his products on display in various trade fairs in Metro Manila and elsewhere.

His firm is usually one of the top-grossers in trade fairs and expositions sponsored by the Department of Trade and Industry, Department of Tourism, Department of Labor and Employment, and Technical Education and Skills Development Authority, among other agencies, in partnership with the business sector. Using only wood procured from legal sources with design combining beauty, practicability and comfort, Reylen’s furniture has set a standard of excellence among local furniture makers.

The New Millenium Award, to be handed out at a ceremony at the Hotel Melia Castilla in Madrid on Nov. 19, is an idea of the editorial office of the Trade Leaders Club to recognize mostly small and medium-scale entrepreneurs with globally competitive products and services.

Before Agub, only two other Filipino entrepreneurs have received the award founded 17 years ago.

“This is an honor that id did not expect to receive. It would have been sufficient reward for me to see that our products are continuously made up to standard, that our customers are satisfied with the products they buy and that business is good,” said Agub, who credited his wife, Helen, as the real reason behind the award.

Reylen’s furniture and Enterprises manufactures all types of furniture, from cabinets, table and chair sets to beds.


Making money out of parties and having fun

So you want to hold your party in a restaurant, bar, or café, to avoid all the fuss and all that mess at home?

About a decade ago, you had to do that by first picking the telephone directory, finding a suitable venue in the yellow pages, making reservations and working out a menu, ordering the décor and the flowers or the balloons, making a guest list, and sending the formal invitation, then making a thousand and one-flow-through and similar such hassles.

Nowadays, however, you just call an event organizer to get that party going nice and easy. And a good, really professional events organizer will notionally take the problem off your back but also put in much more creativity and excitement to your party.

For all these reasons, the occasional job that used to be simply a sideline for some gregarious but business-minded people – has become a full-pledged business, a sizable industry by itself in a fun-loving country like the Philippines.

Among the most active events management practitioners today is Medel Templonuevo, proprietor of an outfit named Something Wonderful Production Design and Events Management. As the longish name more than just suggest, Templonuevo specializes in events management services with a production designer’s touch, using his many long years of experience in film, TV, and stage production.

Templonuevo has been in the events management business for ten years now, doing whole event or party packages and giving them what he calls “the production design edge.” Conceptualizing and actualizing a unique ambience for an event is his forte, which making the existing setup of any restaurant, bar, or café magically, take on the mood that that his client specifically desires for the occasion.

And there, too, is Esoteric Media, an events management company that was started only last September by four friends, Gino Dalao, Katrina Tan, Ted Cruz, and Jenny Yrasuegui. They have made themselves a one-stop shop, doing not only events management but also public relations and marketing services for each project they handle – which means doing everything from graphics design to the tri-media placement of ads for the event.

To these four, events management is all about having fun. They say that they enjoy the roller-coaster process of event management as much as they enjoy the fun of the party itself. And being newcomers in the business, they are fired by a strong desire to make themselves rise above the crowd, creating truly unique, customized concepts for their clients. One such, concept was the Beleza, a month-long Brazilian-themed nightly series that Esoteric Media did recently for the M Café at the Greenbelt shopping complex in Mkati City.

They practically brought Brazil to the coffee shop – complete with a carnival celebration, samba music, Latin-inspired dances, and fashion show. “We created a cross-cultural exchange for our client,” says Yrasuegui.

Indeed, it’s out-of the-box or nothing for this group of young entrepreneurs. As the Dalao of Esoteric Media says, “When we conceptualize an event, we always consider the image that our clients desires to project.” Doing the events management business doesn’t require much capital, and this is obviously a major reason why a lot of people are going into it today.

Creativity aside, you basically need only P50, 000 to P60, 000 in initial capital, roughly 60 percent of which is a must for your operations because you’d be doing al to of moving around while doing your projects, the rest will go to your overhead costs, particularly your transport expenses, and Internet Connection.

The events management business won’t even require having an “official” office space. All you’ll really need to get started is basic office equipment, which means a phone line and a computer with an Internet hook-up of course, you also have to get yourself a digital camera to record your work. In ay case, however, you ‘won’t need much cash to get started. Your clients or sponsors normally would put up front a sizable down payment and cash advances for their big event or party. And if you want to play your cards right, you can recover your initial investment in as fast as six months or less.

“Your biggest investment actually will be legwork,” sys Tan, and by this she means the many clients calls, meetings, follow-ups, supplier searches, and negotiations to get the best deals needed to make the event happen as it should.

Tan says that there are countless ways to produce an event to manage for a client. The usual way is to wait for a client to approach you based on referrals or in response to the company profile that you have routinely submitted to prospective clients, or for you to need for particular events management projects. But the more potentially rewarding one is the proactive approach, which is to directly pitch to prospective clients a special event or marketing concept that you have developed exclusively for them.

To stage and coordinate a major event or party, Templonuevo’s outfit hire a minimum of two to a maximum of 20 people, depending on the nature off the program and the size of the crowd or guest list. In the other hand, Cruz of Esoteric Media says that they usually field two to three production assistants, about six to ten technical team members, and the number of ushers required by the event. As to the events management fee, Templonuevo says that he charges 20 percent of the gross cost of the event, while Tan says Esoteric Media charges 10 to 15 percent.

At any rate, although managing events seems like fun and carefree job, it’ actually not as easy as some people think it is. Ass its practitioners, often say, being organizer is a one thing, but it is an entirely different thing to be able to respond quickly to unexpected problems under extreme pressure. “Thee thing with events is that you never really know when the wild card’s going to show up,” says Ysaruegui. “You just have to be always on your toes.”

And to succeed in this business, you’ll need the widest possible network of contacts to ensure a healthy stream of referrals. More than that, you’ll need lots of creativity and no-nonsense organization skills. For nothing can beat a well-staged, emotionally satisfying event in making a client happy and in spreading the word around that you are really good in what you do.