Market research, networking pay off for these budding entrepreneurs

MANILA, Philippines - “We needed to get things done fast, with a lot of dedication and perseverance, we got our business off the ground.” That’s how Gianina Dayrit, vice president of Cascos Inc., described the business that she and her triathlete husband Maiqui Dayrit currently run. Today, Cascos Inc. is the sole distributor of the elite sports earphones Yurbuds in the Philippines, and when Gianina talks about the volume of work they had done trying to acquire the distributorship of Yurbuds, setting up their company, finding the right mix of stores to carry their product, demonstrating and promoting these one-of-a-kind earphones, and finally getting a good customer base, you would imagine they’d been years at it.

But they only formally began their business in December 2011.

Entrepreneurial success in a handful of months – it is an elusive dream for many budding entrepreneurs, and certainly, many would be interested in discovering the secret of the Dayrits’ success. This didn’t happen overnight for them, we soon discover that Maiqui and Gianina Dayrit had actually been laying the foundation for their business – by learning the necessary skills, forming their network of clients, and searching for their ideal product – many years before its formal startup.

“My husband and I wanted start our own business for quite some time,” Gianina revealed. “But we wanted a product that was really different, really special.”

They found it serendipitously when Maiqui “was fortunate enough to qualify for the Ironman World Championship in Kona, Hawaii last year,” the proud wife related.

And that is where the Dayrits found Yurbuds Sport Earphones. The product was featured in the Ironman Expo and athletes couldn’t seem to get enough of it.

Maiqui, a self-described music junkie, narrated, “I always train best when I’m listening to music. Before there were iPods, I ran with one of those big portable CD players strapped to my back. Since 2002, I’d been trying out practically all the earphones in the market, looking for something that wouldn’t hurt my ears, wouldn’t break when it got wet, wouldn’t fall out of my ears when I run – ‘the perfect’ earphones. I never found it.

“Then,” he continued, “while we were in Kona, I chanced upon Yurbuds, and immediately, I was sold! Not even the more expensive earphones I’d tried before worked as well as these!”

In fact, Maiqui revealed, considering that it was sports earphones, Yurbuds was actually quite moderately priced, so the people who try it out during Cascos demos are often pleasantly surprised when they find out how much it costs.

The couple knew then and there that they had found that very special product that they wanted to introduce to Filipinos. That was in October 2011.

For several weeks after that, the couple feverishly worked on their marketing plan, to submit to the company so that they could be granted distribution rights in the Philippines. There were three bigger companies up against them, but they were granted the distributorship as they were the most passionate about the product.

Gianina added, though, that it helped that Maiqui was already an established insider of the sports world: He knew the psyche of Yurbuds’ target market. He knew what the market wanted and needed.

In December, they won the distributorship, and they put up Cascos Inc. The couple explained that Cascos was the Spanish word for earphones.

Since then, they have been spending their time presenting their products to outlets, attending sports events, doing product demonstrations, holding talks, attending to the inevitable paperwork. “It feels like a very long time since I’ve had a full night’s sleep,” Gianina mentioned, “But it is rewarding nonetheless”.

When asked whether they were planning to expand their products beyond Yurbuds, the Dayrits gave a unanimous no. “Not for a long time,” Maiqui said. “We’ve found a good product that we strongly believe in, and we intend to focus on this.”