BUSINESS BITS

Super kalan
Millet M. Enriquez

MANILA -- Narciso Mosuela worked eight years as a foreman in a car company in Manila before he invented a rice thresher and a woodstove that brought him success as an entrepreneur. He was no engineer, but he knew metal fabrication so well that it served him in good stead to invent thinfs once he quit work. His shift into business happened in 1987 when he and a friend pooled P70,000 to make their own rice thresher. It was something Mosuela had designed while still employed with the car firm, and he aimed it at farmers who needed equipment to thresh their harvest quickly and keep it from spoiling.
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They sold 1,000 units of the five horse-power machine that could thresh output from one hectare in one day with 1.5 gallons of gasoline, but the partners stopped making it when oil prices started going up.

Still, it was during one of their journeys to northern and western Luzon to sell the thresher that Mosuela first had an idea to produce a stove that could use anything for fuel but produced neither smoke nor carbon deposits to stain pots and pans. He made it to thank a couple who had been kind to him, and the couple liked it so much that Mosuela was encouraged to make several more to sell in the public market.
People thought he was crazy. Why sell a woodstove for P80 when people could get a clay stove for P5? Undeterred, Mosuela applied for a patent and started joining trade fairs at the Philippine Trade Training Center to exhibit his Super Kalan. The stove made news, allowing Mosuela to increase its price to P250 not long after.
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“They used to call me scientist na sira kasi ‘di nila naiintindihan kung bakit bibili sila ng kalan na P250, eh meron namang tig-P-50 sa palengke,” recalls Mosuela who had to seek a loan shark to finance the production of his stove, which was selling at P2,200 or P3,900 with table in March 2005.

Still, some people sniffed at his invention later and called in “super kalawang” because it fell to rust. Not one to be discouraged, Mosuela improved the stove by using aluminum alloy and adding a heat regulator for his second trade now, and in 1982 his Super Kalan became one of the 10 outstanding inventions of the year, the same year the Development Bank of the Philippines lent him P79,000 to produce more stoves. He started demonstrating his products in government offices, and in less than a week he got enough orders and paid off the loan.
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The stove sold well in the next three years. Mosuela increased his workers to 20 and hired six marketing people to aim at cooperatives in places as far as Iloilo, but the business keeled over in 1986 when the People Power Revolution drove the Marcoses out and many of their buyers vanished, leaving Mosuela with millions in uncollected receivables. He then decided to move his family to Bangar, La Union, where he invested P100,000 to put up Natomo Manufacturing in 1990 and resume stove production, this time using cement as his main material because he had no manufacturing facility. There was no market for the stoves, so Mosuela went back to making rice threshers.
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He got help from the Department of Science and Technology to buy machinery and money from banks, and eventually he was able to buy land, build plant, and buy a delivery van. His son Danny joined the business in 1998 and took charge of marketing the threshers in Laoag, Vigan, Pangasinan, Sanchez Mira, Tuguegarao and other provinces. They joined exhibits and tied up with government agencies to get clients.

In 2000 the Mosuelas resumed making woodstoves and trained people to mass-produce the product following inquiries from previous buyers. “There’s a big market for the product,” says Danny. “Sa taas ng presyo ng LPG ngayon, if we make 1,000 units, madi-dispose namin.” Still, their lack of capital stops them from making more stoves, since they use premium aluminum alloy and a minimum P130,000 to buy 1.5 tons of scrap metal. They’re able to produce 150 units a month, but they hope to increase their output to 300 monthly as the stove has been widely received in the Mountain Province and they plan to sell it in Isabela, Cagayan, Southern Tagalog and the Bicol region.
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Mosuela continues to tinker with his drawing pad and is happy that his persistence has paid off. “Dati dalawa lang kami ng pamangkin ko na nagpupukpok ng bakal sa bahay,” he says. Walang nakaisip ng lalaki kami ng ganito.”