The hands have it

It has always been a hand-carving affair for Jose and Myrna Bituin.

Capitalizing on the abundance of skills for intricate craftsmanship and the raw materials available in Pampanga, Betis Crafts, Inc. has anchored its revenue stream on hand carving, from the 1970s when it made wooden souvenir items to 1980 when it began making furniture with an initial capitalization of P10,000.

"Hand-carving is our strength. Hand-carved furniture will never be go out of trend. This is what our customers look for in us," said Betis Crafts president Jose Bituin, who placed gross sales last year at about P80 million.

Many of Betis Crafts’ customers are major American firms like Paul Maitland-Smith, Hickory Chairs and Casa Bique, which the Bituins have met at the annual furniture fair in High Point, North Carolina. Betis Crafts first participated in the American trade fair in 1986 under the United Nations-funded Product Development for Export (PRODEX) project of the Product Development and Design Center of the Philippines (PDDCP).

"The project exposed us to American furniture importers who personally visited our plant in Betis and have since become our loyal partners," said marketing director Myrna Bituin. "Ours is a relationship that is more than business."

Rise from the ashes

The company’s plant is no longer in Betis. It has been relocated to Concepcion, Tarlac in the aftermath of the Mt. Pinatubo eruption in 1991. "We had just been awarded the Golden Shell Award for Excellence in product exports by the Center for International Trade Expositions and Missions and our factory was buried in ashes," said the president.

To rebuild, Betis Crafts borrowed P12.2 million from the Development Bank of the Philippines. Seven years later, Betis Crafts got another DBP loan, this time for P9 million, to expand.

Today, Betis Crafts employs 210 in-house carvers and more than 100 subcontractors, an exponential growth from the five carvers in its payroll during its start-up year. "Before, our master carvers did not want to share their skills and knowledge with the younger carvers. We had to explain to them that, if we wanted to meet the demands of the export market, we needed to produce more and producing more meant more hands at work," said Myrna Bituin.

The sharing of secrets is not limited to carving techniques. "When there is an opportunity, I share with our workers what we, as a couple, did when we were starting out, so that they can learn from our experience," said Bituin.

Because of the Bituins’ simple business philosophy that "everybody wants to earn, everybody wants to live", Betis Crafts has, to date, helped six of its entrepreneurial workers build their own little furniture factories and has given them machinery to start businesses of their own. These former employees now do sub-contracting work for Betis, in a relationship built on years of mutual grounds of quality and work discipline.

"I am thankful that Jose and I share the same value of social commitment to our workers," said Myrna Bituin. "What our country needs today are not just entrepreneurs, but entrepreneurs with a social consciousness."