VICENTE ‘VINCE’ H. ADORABLE Country Manager
FEILO SYLVANIA PHILIPPINES, INC.
Armed with almost 20 years of experience in the lighting technology industry, there could be no one more experienced than Vicente “Vince” H. Adorable to run a new entrant in the domestic light business – Feilo Sylvania Philippines, Inc.
Vince is steeping up to the challenge as he sees a tangible void for quality, but affordable lighting fixtures as the Philippine construction sector continues to grow amid a twin-growth engine from the government’s huge capital outlay over a five-year period for its “Build, Build, Build” program, and the robust construction initiatives of the private sector in this consumer-driven economy.
The company
Shanghai Feilo Acoustics Co., Ltd, which is principally engaged in the manufacture and distribution of lighting equipment, headquartered in Shanghai, underwent a reorganization in 2014. It became a joint enterprise comprising of Shanghai Yaming Lighting Co Ltd, Beijing Shen’an Group as well as Shanghai Sunlight Enterprise Co Ltd.
As part of its global expansion, Shanghai Feilo acquired Havells Sylvania, a company founded in Boston, USA in 1901 and one of the world’s largest light source manufacturers, with products from energy-saving lamps and LEDs to specialist sources.
This gave birth to Feilo Sylvania in January, 2016, which is 80 percent owned by Shanghai Feilo. It also gained seven manufacturing bases, logistics centers, R&D technology centers around the world, as well as market access in 48 countries after the acquisition. It also now owns Sylvania’s two famous international brands – Concord and Lumiance.
The Lumiance brand was established in 1934 in the Netherlands and is synonymous with ‘ease of installation,’ making it the contractor’s first choice throughout the world for interior and exterior applications such as shop lighting, offices, public and residential buildings, hotels and restaurants.
Concord Lighting International first registered in 1961 is one of Europe’s most respected retail and museum architectural lighting brands.
A third brand has been added called the Feilo Sylvania to its portfolio. It is geared for the mid-market and as general-purpose lighting manufactured at the company’s manufacturing facility in Shanghai. Feilo Sylvania is its anchor brand in the Philippines.
Void
Feilo Sylvania does not have big presence in the Philippines and Asia yet, although some individual importers bring in the products on their own. It is very competitive in the US, Europe, and the Middle East given its long presence as a European company.
Vince, who previously served as president and country manager of GE Lighting Philippines, Inc. from 2010 to 2017, exactly new the void left by the withdrawal of GE in the Philippines and the Asian region. The only big competitor left is Philips. GE’s withdrawal from this market makes it more compelling for Feilo to enter in this market big time. But even if there is no void left, there is still a good market for a new big player.
Feilo Sylvania is now in a position to fill up that gap. With its financial muscle and manufacturing capability, Feilo Sylvania immediately jumped on that opportunity in Asia, which is in need of good lighting products. For one, Asia is an economic fulcrum and at its center is Southeast Asia driving that growth.
Feilo Sylvania first established its presence in Thailand. Taiwan was opened next in September last year and now, the Philippines.
“Now that we are here, we want to build the business in Asia with southeast Asia as the first market,” says Vince.
“We would like to fill up the gap,” says Vince.
Equipped with almost 20 years of exposure in the local light industry, Vince knows the domestic market like the palm of his hand.
All he has to do is introduce its anchor brand Feilo Sylvania and the new company to the market, distributors, and product specifiers. Feilo Sylvania will be imported from China where the company has a big manufacturing plant in Shanghai.
But they can still offer Concord and Lumiance for specialized applications. The top-of-the-line lighting products will be imported from Europe where the company has manufacturing plants in the United Kingdom, France and Belgium.
The Philippines and even most of the Southeast Asia, which are price sensitive markets and often referred to as a sachet market especially for the Philippines, are now teeming with imported LEDs of questionable quality. These LEDs have found their way into the retail market and even to some professional projects.
“Lighting is an electrical product and it has to come from a reputable manufacturer, but there are some small manufacturers that are just like experimenting the market by selling poor quality and very low-priced lights, but once warranty claims piled up they are gone,” says Adorable.
He agreed that Feilo Sylvania will have to compete against the remaining big player Philips, stressing his brand is not going to compete with the low-priced brands. It sure will compete with Philips, and perhaps also serve the mid-priced market segment, but not lower.
For the consumer market, especially for the hardware stores, they will only focus on Feilo Sylvania brand. They will initially offer Feilo to the professional projects market but if the owners or product specifiers look for more architectural designed lights or projects that need specialized applications, they can offer Concord, which is internationally known for museum lighting, and Lumiance for high-end applications.
For the interior lighting for hotels and hospitals, they can offer Lumiance. But Feilo is being positioned as general lighting purposes but of world-class standards.
Total solutions Dedicated to the maxim of “advocating green lighting, leading a smart life,” Feilo Sylvania proactively implements the three strategies of “brand, globe & capital” to fulfill its identity as the operator of the entire solution to smart city.
The company’s mission is to bring the beauty of light to customers within the Retail, Museum, Office, Education, Logistics and Industry, Consumer, Residential and Hospitality segments.
Its brands are globally recognized for energy efficiency, design expertise and quality across the trade, consumer and specification channels.
Unlike other brands, the company provides lamps, luminaires and controls – a complete portfolio developed through exceptional engineering and supported by outstanding customer service. With a long pedigree in lighting, Feilo Sylvania is still innovating, exploring, refining and creating advanced lighting technology, ensuring that it will continue to earn customers’ trust in the years to come.
Feilo Sylvania prides themselves on building the highest quality and most technologically advanced products within lighting. It has wide ranging customers from architectural practices, lighting designers and electrical contractors to end users. Already, its products have won many accolades and awards.
“We intend to stay and invest in protecting our brand, this is a reputable brand,” he adds.
Today, Feilo has grown to be a major player in the market as it invested in new and cutting-edge technologies to produce innovative products.
The company brands are not only known for their saving features not just for its LED bulbs but total solutions. Globally, Feilo is a number four in terms of size.
Vince noted that while other LED brands offer products in sachet for retail market, Feilo offers integrated solutions where lights are connected to controls and sensors.
“We offer complete solutions to benefit the market,” says Vince.
In addition, the company is collaborating with lighting designers, who work as part of the lead architect, to specify light fixtures and designs. Lighting designing is a new profession in the Philippines, but is already popular in developed countries such as Singapore.
Lighting designers have been there already in the last 10-15 years, but is just new in the Philippines. They are different from the electrical engineers. Most of them come from Europe, Australia and Singapore and are working with lighting design agencies.
Vince intends to aggressively boost this distribution model with product specifiers from architects to lighting designers.
“The plan is to hire lighting application engineers and work with lighting designers, who are our partners because they can help us with more projects. If we have alliance with them, we are capable of doing application engineering, but the architectural lighting design we will give it to lighting designers,” he adds.
Vince also vowed to work closely in the consumer distribution channel through hardware stores and the modern retail DIY stores to boost retail business.
The retail sector is a constant flow business and a consistent revenue stream. It is also a very good channel at introducing a brand into the market. So together with their distributors, Vince is starting to mount brand promotion and awareness campaign for the retail market.
The professional projects business is where they are more excited as this involves bigger business in collaboration with developers, owners and product specifiers.
Vince puts his hopes for bigger opportunities coming from the professional projects as he cited the huge construction boom in the country.
And Vince is making sure all these will translate into sales and revenues for Feilo Sylvania. “This makes it very exciting because we have something good to offer,” he adds.
“With our complete solutions, our chances are very good in the professional projects segment,” he adds. The projects division provides volume and better profitability.
Overall though, he said, revenue sources could be equally divided between professional projects and retail.
With a complete corporate structure now in place in Manila, the focus is to aggressively move into the market with distributorship agreements with distributors and dealerships with nationwide network. Already, Vince would like to start with a conservative 10 percent market share this year from zero.
“We are bringing all these to benefit the market,” he adds.
Bullish
The lighting industry though in the country does not have official figure as to its size, but suffice it to say that it is growing.
“With the administration’s priority program Build, Build, Build, we want to be competitive and offer world-class technology products. That is where we see faster growth,” says Vince.
As such, the objective really is not just to become the biggest brand in lighting in the country but to be the biggest in terms of revenue.
With a population of 100 million Filipinos in a consumer-led economy, Vince sees a very bullish construction market.
The incandescent lamps of 10-15 years ago will now need to change to LED where Feilo finds themselves well-positioned because they have very competitive price points.
Vince also wants to participate in the government procurement initiatives for lights both at the national and the local government unit levels. There are still street lights that need to be converted to LEDs in the provinces. “Yes, we are very bullish,” he adds. It has advanced technology offers solutions that are fit for all needs. For instance, Feilo Sylvania offers lights that will just open when it detects someone in the room, in factories and other facilities. They have streetlights that automatically shut off when daylight comes and adjust to dimmer lights when sensors detect there are already fewer vehicles on the road. This means that only the right amount of illumination is provided on a need basis.
This energy-saving technology substantially reduces power consumption. The shift from the traditional incandescent lamp to CFL alone already enabled 80 percent energy savings. The change to LED could possibly add at least 50 percent savings, thus, the power consumption savings could have gone over 100 percent, according to Vince.
The initial target is to compete versus Philips, a recognized leader in lighting aside from GE. But Vince said that Feilo Sylvania could be of same league or probably better, but they could, more affordable pricing wise.
New company
Vince was happy having worked with GE until it finally bid the market in the region goodbye. They were provided with good retirement packages though.
Now, with Feilo Sylvania, Vince is excited to work in the same industry in an entirely new organization, which is owned by a Chinese group and for which he believes as also very generous employer.
Working in a leaner organization and relatively younger organization means faster decision-making process and less bureaucratic. Most MNCs, which are listed in the New York Stock Exchange, are more careful and controls and process are well in place. This could also slow down work, resulting in some missed market opportunities.
But Vince finds his new company flexible enough for him to respond to the market immediately and adjust their strategies.
Although the owners of Feilo Sylvania are already Chinese, the core values of the company still rest with the management from Europe because it was founded in the west.
“I can see lots of opportunities, things we cannot do before we can now,” say Vince.
Another advantage of Feilo Sylvania is they can offer help on the financing aspect as the company has the muscle to extend project financing.
“This is sort of an edge when we negotiate that is why it is very important to have finance people onboard,” says Vince.
Relationships
With his loyalty in the industry, Vince said he learned that relationship is one secret to succeed in business.
Good quality product is also very important, but if there is no relationship between the company and the customer, meaning no after-sales service, this will make customers unhappy.
“It should be a win-win for both the company and the customers, and later you build relationships, and help each other grow,” says Vince adding that “business relationships should be warm, not cold.”
“We have personal touch with distributors, retailers and we offer after sales service always,” adds Vince, a commerce graduate major in Marketing Management at De La Salle University.
But, he also stressed that at the end of the day “business is business” so it is also difficult to build good relations if you have no good products, even if you extend very good service.
Feilo Sylvania lights are green products and certified by the International Electrotechnical Commission, an international standards organization that prepares and publishes International Standards for all electrical, electronic and related technologies – collectively known as “electrotechnology.”
Vince is an advocate of employee empowerment. As he leads a very lean organization with only seven people, Vince expects them to do their tasks and deliver.
As for himself, Vince would rather focus on looking outside for opportunities where they can grow and implement and makes them more efficient. But he engages his team by guiding and coaching so they learn more, develop skills and become better leaders.
As long they can deliver and things are running well, he will let them be. It is when things are not delivered that he would come in. He has managers for each of the verticals from professional, distribution and industrial.
An advocate of work-life-balance, Vince is a passionate golf player. He plays once a week. He is also very active with Serviam, a Catholic Charismatic Community.
The former sales and advertising executive who previously worked with only few other companies has fulfilled his dream to work for a multinational company.
Vince did not go any farther. He is back in his comfort zone, but in a more challenging and exciting environment.