Home Business Hit it Big
By Marou Pahati Sarne

Two young entrepreneurs prove that small businesses can take on the big boys in the industry. Armed with sheer guts and a little help from their families, they were able to establish their home businesses that eventually grew in a short period of time.

Lorelie Espiritu, more popularly known as Olai in the beauty industry, is a 36-year old mother of three. Married to the owner of a used-car dealership in Ortigas, Pasig, Olai started her own beauty business at home.

Porfirio Rodriguez, Jr. or Jun, 34, is the son of an inventor. He started his business in computers when he was still in school. Together with four of his close friends, they set up a small computer shop with their own desktop computers as investment.

   DAVID AGAINST GOLIATH

Olai has been in the business of selling since she learned how to count. “I would sell candies, hair clips, trinkets and whatever small items that my schoolmates would like. During my teen-age years, I experimented with beauty products and sold these to my classmates, using myself as the guinea pig.”

She became obsessed with turning ducklings into swans after undergoing a difficult problem during puberty – acne. “I used to have lots of pimples. Some of my friends had the same problem. We would cover our faces with lots of powder but that did not help. I promised myself that I will search for the ultimate solution to every teen-agers’ dilemma,” she says.

But her goal had to take the sidelines when she decided to get married a year after graduating from college. In 1992, Olai married Roland who was then a car salesman for Union Motors-Mitsubishi. Olai, a B.S. Computer Management graduate from the Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP), was working for the Manila Electric Company (Meralco) that time.

She gave birth to her first child, Paolo, now 11, at the age of 24. Alyssa, 8, followed three years after. While handling the payroll of Meralco, Olai rediscovered her first love – selling! She would sell clothes, accessories and food supplements to her co-employees and other friends.

“Whenever my husband and I would go on a vacation in Hong Kong and other countries here in Asia, I would often come home with a truckload of these items,” she says.

At the same time, she joined the networking bandwagon and distributed slimming products. “I began earning more with my side-line so I decided to resign from Meralco after seven years. I established my own networking company wherein our main products were shoes. But after some months, the business failed,” says Olai.

This did not dampen Olai’s spirit. She put up a massage service with a lone masseur and a portable foot spa in tow. “It was a phone-a-massage service. Clients would call and we’d do home massage. I also started doing facial services after attending seminars conducted by certified dermatologists. But we had to stop doing home services because some clients, particularly men, have this wrong notion about masseurs.”

In 2003, Olai discovered a whitening pill from Japan through her friend, Vanni Patillas. She had just given birth to her youngest child, Samantha, and she was having problems with some dark spots in her body due to the pregnancy. After trying the product and proving its efficacy, Olai, together with her friend, started distributing Met Tathione whitening pills in Metro Manila and eventually in other parts of the country.

At the same time, she set up her own spa and offered facial services in her home in Blue Ridge, Quezon City. This ushered the birth of her new company, White Beauty Philippines.

“I used my kids’ room at the second floor of our house as my clinic and office. I invested more or less P 24, 000 for my generic steamer and lamp and the machine for laser, coterie and vacuuming of the face. My friend, Mai Hermosa, mother of actress Kristine Hermosa, who used to have her own salon, gave me her facial bed,” Olai relates.

As her client base increased, Olai moved her clinic to a unit in Cityland-Shaw Tower in Mandaluyong City in September 2004. She imported additional machines and acquired the services of a licensed dermatologist and cosmetic surgeon. She gambled on a tri-media marketing strategy by buying spots in radio and television as well as in the print media. Olai also joined exhibits to showcase her products and services.

Her visibility in media paid off as Olai befriended beautiful celebrities in television and radio. Miss World Evangeline Pascual, Cory Quirino, Daisy Reyes, Stella Ruiz and other teen-age actresses and actors have joined Olai’s growing clientele. With this, Olai felt the need to put up a bigger and more equipped beauty center; thus the birth of White Beauty Aesthetic Center in West Avenue, Quezon City, in September of this year.

Through the help of Dr. Manolet Ferreol, reconstructive surgeon of the Philippine General Hospital (PGH) and Dr. Rey Salinel, Jr., diabetic and internal medicine doctor of Ospital ng Maynila and Philippine Children’s Medical Center, Olai was able to establish her new 100 square-meter clinic with three treatment rooms, one operating room, one consultation room and one common facial area. It has also one lounge area and two office rooms.

“I can proudly say that I did not loan anything from anyone in putting up my business. The seed money was a product of years of hard work – dating from my buy and sell years. I never gave up, experimented on different kinds of businesses until I hit my target. I know I am a David against the Goliaths of the beauty industry, but didn’t David bring down Goliath by just a single stone?” ends Olai.

 OLD PC TURNED IN THE MONKEY

Jun was in his last year in AMA Computer College-Quezon City when he and his friends decided to put up an Internet shop in McArthur Highway, Valenzuela City. Carrying their own desktop computers, electricity testers and other kits used in fixing computers, they set up the Innovative Internet Shop in 1993.

“We didn’t have the money, we were just lucky,” says Jun. Five old personal computers were used for gaming and surfing and they accepted computer repairs, applying their technical know-how’s from school.

“We would take turns in manning the shop and we would chip in for the rental and the electricity. Sometimes, we would use our school allowance when the business is bad,” relates Jun.

When he and his friends graduated from college, they decided to dismantle the shop as they looked for other opportunities. “I brought home my pc and started my own Internet business there, using that lone computer. I also started entertaining clients, usually our neighbors in Valenzuela, who would need computer assistance, such as printing their school projects, designing personal calling cards and others.”

Jun married Yolly, a young computer secretarial graduate, in July 1999. Like the old saying, “Behind every man’s success is a woman,” Yolly turned her husband’s business around and helped him establish the Ontract Computer and Printing System in 2000.

“We kept on adding another PC to the original one until I had several desktop computers for Internet and gaming services,” says Jun, who also had to ask some help from his father, Porfirio Rodriguez, Sr., inventor of the BioGas, for the use of a part of their home in Paso de Blas, Valenzuela, as their computer shop.

Yolly resuscitated Jun’s desire to put up a bigger computer business. “She did everything – marketing, setting up a website, meeting people and even delivering the finished products. We took turns in taking care of our three kids, Aimie, 6, Diether, 4, and Tristan, 2,” narrates Jun.

Their clientele grew as Yolly joined e-groups and functions that would help enhance their business. They eventually went into other areas of computing and printing services like making tarpaulins for companies and personalized bags.

“We had to import a large-format printer from China and other materials for the production of tarpaulin. I asked my father to lend us another room in the house to accommodate the printer, steamer and the big tarpaulins,” says Jun.

The dependable desktop computer which was Jun’s first tool in the business has been converted into his own invention – a Vendo Internet Computer. Jun put a coin slot in the pc’s central processing unit (CPU) wherein a user can insert his P 5.00 coin to operate the computer.

“We have plans of expanding our business and acquire additional equipment. Business is good and I have my wife, my family and my trusted personal computer to thank,” Jun enthuses.

All big things start out small. We don’t always have to rely on employment. Olai and Jun are the best examples of successful ingenuity leading the way to business success.

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