A team to beat

I have always loved clothes, and so I figured: why not create and sell products that are very close to my heart?

And so we did. We struggled and worked hard to get our products accepted and our name established, and after two years of waiting, we finally got our break when the SM and Robinsons malls accepted Bobson as a department-store brand. It was a big break, and it made all 30 of us pioneers determined to succeed no matter what.

Everyone pitched in and worked very long hours, but the emotional rewards far outweighed the financial gains. We now have more than 600 regular employees.

To manage the company well, I had always believed in the importance of teamwork– all members of the team doing the tasks necessary to achieve our goals.

As a young entrepreneur, the foremost challenge I faced was to form a strong team: I kept in mind that I should have people who knew the business and were willing to apply their expertise to the objectives at hand; and then I had to motivate them and make sure that all members of the team were pulling towards the same direction.

As a result, we now have a management committee that sets our direction and an executive committee that takes care of business and financial planning.

We have always preached and practiced the principle that long-term growth takes precedence over short-term gains. We have consistently applied this philosophy in our dealings with employees, suppliers, bankers, and customers.

The difficulties that we normally encounter are the same ones faced by other companies today–challenges like the increasing cost of doing business, higher interest rates, stiffer competition, decreasing margins, and sporadic threats of political uncertainty.

But we have learned to deal with these problems as a matter of course, and Bobson has been doing relatively well in spite of them. The business strategies that we adopted in the past have allowed us to generate increased sales and secure financial stability, create a highly productive work force, and have loyal and efficient suppliers, aggressive distributors, and more responsive financial institutions.

We maintain good customer relations by treating our resellers and department-store outlets as business partners. We listen to what the youth, our market, have to say about the quality of our products and service; and to listen more effectively, we train our people in all aspects of customer service.

We measure growth not only in terms of the annual increases in our sales, but also in terms of the variety of the merchandise we introduce and the quality of our presence in the major trading centers.

We intend to continue increasing our market presence by putting up more company-owned boutiques and franchised outlets. We will continue to pursue our vision of being the best retailer in the fashion industry and our mission to provide quality products and services and to deliver value to our customers, employees, business partners, and shareholders. –-Interview by Randy Vitales

Bobson

Telephone: (02) 364-2227

Fax: (02) 365-6279

E-mail: [email protected]