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One way of inspiring and encouraging more Pinoy Entrepreneurs to swim in the sea of entrepreneurship is to write about those who've made it. This the observation of Marites A. Khanser, the author of the book "John L. Gokongwei, Jr.: The Path of Entrepreneurship" (Loyola Schools, Ateneo de Manila University, 2007). She noted, however, that "very few business success books of the taipans in the Philippines have been written seemingly because of their reluctance to tell their stories or go to the public with the secrets of their business success."
Fortunately, this has been slowly addressed in the past year or two, with the publication of books on Pinoy Entrepreneurs, for Pinoy Entrepreneurs. There's " Negosyo: Joey Concepcion's 50 Inspiring Entrepreneurial Stories," which contains the stories and lessons of 50 successful and inspiring Pinoy Entrepreneurs. More recently, the Association of Filipino Franchisers, Inc. (AFFI) launched the " Introduction to Entrepreneurship: Success Stories of Filipino Stories," which contains the success stories and lessons of 15 entrepreneurs (this will be the subject of a separate post). Sharing the stories and lessons of existing Pinoy Entrepreneurs is also the main reason why we have discussions with young and upcoming entrepreneurs, like Abe Olandres and Louane Roa.
For this article, let's focus on John Gokongwei, Jr. It's really not difficult to learn about his life story and his message, as these matters have been incorporated in his speeches. In fact, it would be more productive to read his speeches, which also contain the lessons on life and entrepreneurship that he learned along the way. We know that Gokongwei, who lost his father when he was 13 years old, worked hard to support his family. He started by selling simple products in the palengke near Cebu City. He would wake up at 5 in the morning, load thread, soap and candles into his bicycle, and rush to the palengke, where he would rent a stall for one peso a day. He was the youngest vendor in the palengke, but that did not stop him from earning P20 a day (that's more than half a century ago). The rest of the story is better told in his own words:
Then, when I had enough money and more confidence, I decided to travel to Manila from Cebu to sell all kinds of goods like rubber tires. Instead of my bike, I now traveled on a batel -- a boat so small that on windless days, we would just float there. On bad days, the trip could take two weeks!
During one trip, our batel sank! We would have all perished in the sea were it not for my inventory of tires. The viajeros were happy because my tires saved their lives, and I was happy because the viajeros, by hanging on to them, saved my tires. On these long and lonely trips I had to entertain myself with books, like Gone With The Wind.
After the war, I had saved up 50,000 pesos. That was when you could buy a chicken for 20 centavos and a car for 2,000 pesos. I was 19 years old.
Now I had enough money to bring my family home from China [sent to China after the death of his father]. Once they were all here, they helped me expand our trading business to include imports. Remember that the war had left the Philippines with very few goods. So we imported whatever was needed and imported them from everywhere-including used clothes and textile remnants from the United States. We were probably the first ukay-ukay dealers here.
Then, when I had gained more experience and built my reputation, I borrowed money from the bank and got into manufacturing. I saw that coffee was abundant, and Nescafe of Nestle was too expensive for a country still rebuilding from the war, so my company created Blend 45.
That was our first branded hit. And from there, we had enough profits to launch Jack and Jill. From one market stall, we are now in nine core businesses-including retail [Robinsons Retail Group], real estate [Robinsons Land Corporation, Robinson Galleria, Manila Midtown Hotels, etc.], publishing, petrochemicals [JG Petrochem], textiles [Litton Mills], banking [Robinsons Savings Bank], food manufacturing [Universal Robina Corporation], Cebu Pacific Air and Sun Cellular [plus Digitel].
That is the shortened story of an entrepreneur who walked this earth for more than 80 years now, and still counting. Marites Khanser analyzed the entrepreneurial style of Mr. Gokongwei, as well as entrepreneurship in general, in the book. If only there are no copyright considerations, it would be best to just reproduce the entire book here. You could continue reading, of course, by buying the reasonably-priced, 144-page book. Still, let's have a brief summary of the discussions and findings of Dr. Khanser, coupled with the lessons distilled from John Gokongwei's speeches, which will be contained in Part 2.
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