Sagada’s Gabay Wines wins Cordi regional awards

SAGADA-Management team mother  Sofia Kollin Kilongan and daughter Stephanie Kilongan Robles keeps Gabay Wines and Fruit Preserves going. 

(1st of 2 parts)

By Gina Dizon
SAGADA, Mountain Province -  True to its name, micro enterprise Gabay Wines and Fruit Preserves won the regional Productivity Olympics Awards 2021 in the industry sector.
’Gabay’ in the local dialect means abundance and prosperity which comes with helping others, passion for work as source of livelihood.
With that, the Covid pandemic did not stop Gabay Wines and Fruit Preserves from producing bottles and bottles of jams, jellies and wines and engage in online marketing in the new normal of things.
    Awarded by the Dept. of Labor and Employment, with its attached agencies National Wages and Productivity Commission (NWPC) and Tripartite Wages and Productivity Board in the regional level, micro enterprise Gabay is one among three firms in the industry sector that won the Productivity Olympic Awards  July this year based on business continuity, employee engagement and preservation.
    Comes October in time with the Productivity and Quality Month,  Gabay along with regional 2021 productivity awardees in the industry sector Benguet-based  Atok Coffee Growers Marketing Cooperative and Baguio-based Easter weaving in the small industry category is set for  national awards.  
    They include regional awardee medium enterprise Sagada based- Treasure Link Cooperative Society in the services sector; Baguio-based Fresh buys PH,  small enterprise Baguio Benguet Community Cooperative, Baguio City-based Northern Roots SG group Inc; and Baguio-based Health 100 restaurant in the medium level in the service sector. Regional agribusiness awardees are La Trinidad -based Cosmic Farms and Mountain Province-based Palayen Farms.
    Micro enterprises have asset size P3 million and below, small industries with assets P3 million to P15 million; and medium level enterprises with P15 million to P100 million asset size.
    The national Productivity Olympics is held every two years to “showcase best designed and successfully implemented productivity improvement programs and practices” of micro, small, and medium enterprises in the agribusiness, service, and industry sectors."  
    Gabay is one among national finalists that also won the regional productivity awards in 2019.
    Gabay Wines and  Fruit Preserves started small and simple.    
    Former overseas migrant worker and now entrepreneur and proprietor to Gabay Wines and Fruit Preserves Sofia Kollin Kilongan,56 cooked jams and jellies and sold these to neighbors, relatives and friends when she came home to Ambasing, Sagada for good from Hongkong in 2002.
    For some three years, Sofia cooked jams and jellies while she tended to her three children.
    Her husband Francis, then a barangay chairman helped in sorting fruits for the jam and jelly preserves. .
    It was in the early years of 2004 when Gabay went on a new venture when Sofia attended a training on wine making conducted by the Department of Agriculture.
    Wines from locally grown citrus, rice, guavas, and forest - grown ‘bugnay’ were produced with the use of plastic containers as fermenting equipment. 
    Gabay wines became a favorite and soon displayed in almost every souvenir shop in town.
    The business grew with the coming in of Sofia’s daughter Stephanie who baked cakes and cookies and manned the display center located in the main town.
    Gabay was registered with the Dept. of Trade and Industry (DTI) in 2016, from its earlier trade name Gabay Fruit Wines to Gabay Wines and Fruit Preserves.
    Stephanie, a Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) graduate found their family business encouraging that she quit from her volunteership stint at St Theodore’s Hospital in 2010 and went full time tending to the newly opened shop.
    Gabay Wines has eight women employees, young mothers who sort and wash fruits made into wines, jams and jellies, wash bottles, and pack the products ready for delivery.  
    Gabay before the pandemic was able to employ a maximum of 10 persons mostly women who did sorting and washing of fruits and cleaning of bottles. They also watched over the display center and attended to customer- tourists who daily stopped to buy souvenir items.
    The eight women aid the family business done by parents, children and grandchildren to make Gabay Wines and Fruit Preserves going.
    Apart from salaries they receive in compliance to the minimum wage law, workers are given additional financial benefits during childbirth apart too from the usual SSS and Phil health commitments of Gabay.    This along with DOLE- NWPC’s Productivity Awards aims to “to protect people, clients, business itself and be able to recover with the community and restore critical operations the soonest in the event of any disruption.”
    The mother and daughter management team kept Gabay going which saw it flourishing along with the booming of the tourism business of Sagada in the years 2000.
    Sofia’s husband who was then elected as municipal councilor 2010 to 2013 delivers orders during his free time.
    His death in 2018 due to cardiac arrest was a loss to Sofia and family and a loss to a flourishing enterprise.