The Filipino Entrepreneur

While I was reading the Entrepreneur magazine, two Filipino Chinese entrepreneurs caught my attention. One is Mr. Cecilio Kwok Pedro the toothpaste magnate and the other Mr. Alfredo M. Yao the self made fruit drink magnate. The reason is because of their decisions that turned disappointments into an opportunity. The first one I want to discuss is Mr. Cecilio Kwok Pedro. He is the President and CEO of Lamoiyan Corp. which is the first Filipino company who penetrated the Philippine Toothpaste market.

That market was dominated by big foreign companies ( those that produce Colgate and Close-up). Now Happee toothpaste ranks no 3 in the toothpaste brand. Because of that success he was able to diversify his products into dish washing soaps, liquid detergents, fabric enhancers and other gum formula tooth paste.

He started his toothpaste company after he closed down his aluminum tube manufacturing company, Aluminum Tube Containers Inc.. His company supply other toothpaste makers but when those company uses plastic laminated tubes for making the toothpaste, the demand vanished. Then instead of loosing a business, he once again bounced back by putting up Lamoiyan Corp. and rehired some of his workers and made his own brand of toothpastes. He also have a unique objective on hiring workers, he gave opportunity to disabled people to be productive by employing deaf and mute workers.

The second one is Mr. Alfredo M. Yao, little that we know that his idea of the “doy packs” will became a breakthrough in ready to drink fruit juice packaging. But at first he introduced the technology to fruit drinks manufacturers, it was then refused. But instead of giving up and following the usual trend in packaging, he decided to make fruit juice drinks himself and used the packaging technology to his own fruit drinks manufacturing company. He then put up Zest-O Corp.

Sometimes there are things that we don’t expect to happen and we consider it like an ill luck but in the long run we find out that it’s a blessing in disguise. Hoping this short post about those two entrepreneur serve as an inspiration to us that we should never give up.