Notes for new businesses
DTI vows to keep monitoring Project Kapatid participants, help them grow volume, reach
ENTREPRENEURS Marvin Viagedor, owner of Silly Boy Hot Sauce, and Ma. Aleta dela Calzada, owner of Alter to Enhance (A.T.E) Clothier, hope to capture a bigger market in the food and fashion retail industries one day.
Viagedor plans to make Silly Boy available at local retailers like supermarkets, groceries, and pasalubong centers, and to bring the brand across the country and to the international market in five years.
A.T.E Clothier, on the other hand, aims to open more outlets in Cebu and make the clothing shop part of Cebu’s tour itineraries.
Viagedor and Dela Calzada were among the 26 Cebuano entrepreneurs who graduated last Friday from the Kapatid Mentor Me Program (Project Kapatid), a project of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) in collaboration with the Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCCI).
The program aims to help micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) scale up
businesses through weekly coaching (12 weeks) and mentoring by business owners and practitioners on the different areas of entrepreneurship.
The mentorship was done in two phases. Phase 1, which was good for two weeks, covered modules on basic entrepreneurship such as the entrepreneurial mindset and values foundation and marketing.
Weeks three up to 10 covered more advanced business modules such as operations management, supply and value chain, human resource management, financial management, taxation, and business law.
Viagedor, a long-standing client of DTI, resigned from his job at a multi-national company to focus on his business full-time.
“After seeing the overview of the modules, we just could not waste this opportunity. We were thankful that DTI saw our product’s potential and chose us out of the hundreds of businesses that applied,” he said.
Like a free MBA
Viagedor said he gained a lot of knowledge in terms of improving the business.
“It was basically an MBA (Masters in Business Administration) course packed into 11 sessions that were given for free. The mentors are experts in their assigned topics,” he said. “Wala gyud koy notes katong nagskwela pa ko pero pag mentoring program kay pwerteng notes nako, oy (I never took notes when I was a student, but during the mentoring program, I took copious notes).”
Viagedor added that prior to this mentoring program, he did not know that the government has a lot of free services that can help entrepreneurs.
Viagedor collects different hot sauce brands. He currently has more than 200 bottles of different hot sauces from all over the world, given by friends and family as homecoming gifts. His wife, Nicole, on the other hand, loves cooking and baking, and creating different types of food, which led to the birth of Silly Boy Hot Sauce.
The business was officially launched in October 2015. Before the Mentor Me Program, Silly Boy was available in Koa Tree House, Lamiks Chicken and Beer, and The Toy Box and Vape 8 Talisay.
“Through the Kapatid Mentor Me Program, we realized that there are still a lot of things we need to correct in our business model. We decided to stop supplying at the bars or shops so we can make the appropriate changes and apply what we have learned so that by January 2017 we can distribute to more shops and Silly Boy Hot Sauce will easily be accessible to everyone,” he said.
“Hopefully, by the end of 2017, we will conquer Cebu. We hope that almost all restaurants would use Silly Boy Hot Sauce,” he added.
A fashionable following
Dela Calzada’s story, on the other hand, is about a childhood hobby that turned into an enterprise.
Prior to creating A.T.E Clothier in 2014, she worked in sales and marketing for different multinational companies. The network that she was able to form led to the revival of a passion she long had: the knitting and quilting of clothes and blankets, which she would sell.
“I realized that tig-tahi diay ko (that I love sewing clothes),” said Dela Calzada, who took a fashion business course in New York six months into the business.
According to Dela Calzada, A.T.E wasn’t run the professional way. It had no system flow nor inventory process to follow but, luckily, it found a positive following from local personalities here and in Manila.
“It was my friends in the business that encouraged and recommended me to join the program. I saw this as an opportunity to grow and professionalize the business,” she said.
“The program really helped me a lot. In fact, as a result, we are now starting to create the process flow of the business and later on automation. I also learned to delegate tasks in the business, make everyone get involved so operations will run smoothly,” said Dela Calzada. She plans to outsource some of the business operations like human resource management, legal, and accounting.
Dela Calzada plans to open a showroom at the Mactan-Cebu International Airport, as well as more outlets in Cebu given the traffic congestion now in the city.
Virgilio Espeleta, vice president for business development of CCCI, said the Kapatid Mentor Me program aims to help micro players become small entrepreneurs and eventually graduate to medium and large enterprises.
“I really saw in them the eagerness and willingness to learn and grow,” he said.
The program also aims to build confidence among entrepreneurs so they could pursue their business plans and create a network.
“We are actually promoting a sibling partnership here, where big businesses help small ones to also become big like them,” said Espeleta.
New batch in February 2017
Ma. Elena Arbon, provincial director of the DTI-Cebu, said the program has also opened new opportunities and potential new markets for entrepreneurs, and brought them into the formal business ecosystem.
Arbon noted that other participants in the Kapatid program have also availed themselves of other free services in DTI such as e-commerce mentorship, among others.
After the graduation of the first batch, Espeleta added they are now accepting applications for Batch 2, for which the training phase will begin in February 2017.
He said they have prepared an upgraded module for Batch 2, using what they learned from the implementation of the pilot batch.
Nelia Navarro, assistant regional director of DTI 7, said the agency will also tap other government agencies to join the program for the second batch. She assured that the DTI will continue to monitor the graduates.
“This will be a continuous learning to ensure that these businesses will grow, generate sales and employment,” she said. “We will also help them in growing their volume. What is important here is that we are already making the value chain move with this program.”
Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez, who was the former executive director of Go Negosyo, said that Project Kapatid is a “win-win” program that is also aligned with President Rodrigo Duterte’s agenda of spreading prosperity to all.
DTI is now accepting applications for the second batch of the Kapatid Mentor Me Program, for which the training phase will begin in February 2017