Viable ventures

In December, we saw a cadre of wannabe entrepreneurs move on after six months in AIM’s Venture into Entrepreneurship (VIE) Program, which incubates not only business ventures and entrepreneurial personalities but, more importantly, the mind and entrepreneurial spirit. It felt good to see venture ideas assume the making of a business reality. Better yet, it felt great to have a crop of unsure individuals raring to be entrepreneurs make a go of it.

What did it take to have a viable venture?

• Ms. A was fresh out of college and quite fond of nice and pretty sleepwear. She initially thought of producing her own line of sleepers, shirts and pajamas that young girls would like to wear in their slumber parties and even while at home. She did a simple survey of her target market, consisting primarily of high school students in the 13-17 age bracket. She asked for their preferences in terms of sleepwear material, color, and length. Using the valuable survey information, Ms. A designed pajama tops/bottoms and nightshirts and commissioned a garments manufacturer to produce her prototypes. After asking her classmates and friends to comment on her samples, she finalized the designs, chose her colors, and bought the materials. She also looked into various ways of packaging her products, using different types of bags. When the first run of her finished products were done , she joined bazaars at the World Trade Center and Hotel Intercontinental last November. To minimize costs, she initially shared a booth with her friends. A large majority of the buyers of her products turned out to be singles on the look out for gift items. Her trial run grossed more than P100,000.

• When she enrolled in VIE, Ms. C was contemplating on getting a photo processing machine. However, the amount involved was quite big and she needed to make a sound decision. In the beginning of the first loop of the program which dealt with opportunity seeking, she spotted one opportunity when a small commercial stall became available. It was located in densely populated Comembo-Pembo, a district of Makati comprised of low income households. She immediately got the stall, acquired the photo finishing machine and had her soft opening in July 2002. While there were similar establishments within half a kilometer radius, these shops carried the more known film brand plus photo processing. In order to catch the attention of her target customers, she had to think of promotional activities. Her outfit made one basic promise to them–fast , high quality photo processing service–plus another promise, free film. The customers in the area lapped up the idea and her sales gradually increased and began to stabilize. Then, she offered another freebee: sardines! While others laughed at the idea, her sales kept improving. To top it all, while there were three big-named competitors in the area when she started, one firm has already closed shop. Ms. C succinctly put her next move: "One down, two to go."

• As a professional dentist, Ms. G was fully aware that one of the biggest health-related problems in the country had something to do with the poor dental health of Filipino families. She enrolled in VIE, firmly resolved to heighten awareness of the importance of dental care and the need for preventive measures. She had always thought of setting up a one-stop dental store offering a variety of local and imported products. She initially intended to cater to the higher income bracket, who would understand the benefits of such products. Most of the oral care products she had in mind (such as fluoride-free toothpaste for infants and toothbrushes and products meant for the elderly who suffer from mouth dryness) are not locally available. She searched on the internet for suppliers, consulted relatives and friends who were dental practitioners in the United States and listed their product recommendations. She joined an international dentists’ conference in the US last October and brought home several boxes of samples. The following month, she joined bazaars and mothers became her number one customers. Almost all her products have already been sold.

• Ms. M was a consultant on spa development before she enrolled in the program. She was thinking of formalizing and expanding this type of service since spa salons have caught the fancy of many investors and customers alike in the urban areas. Her primary advantage was that she had worked with some pioneer spa establishments in Makati that catered to the upper income bracket. She invested in herself and got some formal training for this type of service and coupled it with the VIE program to enhance her managerial skills. On the fourth and fifth month of the program, she already had her hands full. She was able to clinch a customized package of spa consulting services for a number of clients who have now invested in what she advised them to do–from the concept to the "look", the physical set-up, equipment, range of services, pricing, and staff training. More significantly, a host of new opportunities have opened up for her, including the opening of her own spa next year.

• After completing two years of college, Ms. T decided that she was not interested in pursuing an academic degree, at least not yet. She was more keen on pursuing her artistic inclinations through fashion. In fact, she had been telling her parents about it since her foreign travels had exposed her to various fashion centers and had made her passion for fashion even more intense. She started making earrings, bracelets, belts and other accessories out of beads and sold these to friends. She was making sketches of dresses, t-shirts and other fashion items that caught her fancy. Ms. T joined the VIE program with this particular interest in mind and she was able to set up her own enterprise which now bears her name to mean "light of the world". She is specializing in one-of-a-kind fashion accessories made of a combination of light materials that include ceramic, wooden and plastic beads combined with metal and natural materials.

• Mr. AJ used to work in a telecommunications company. He resigned from his job to enroll in VIE. His dream was to put up his own IT company and sell various software applications. As he went through the six-month venture program, he looked at the potentials of the e-commerce sector. He decided to specialize and pioneer in e-commerce security applications for enterprises. He started going to ICT trade shows to know more about his market. Eventually, he started negotiating for a license to sell a security software application for the internet and wireless devices market that will include not only enterprise users but also personal and/or household computer users. He got the license and registered his company. He was able to introduce the product in another IT trade show and generated customers from direct selling strategies. He is now working on getting the licenses of other specialized software products and operate mainly as a reseller of software for local users of internet and e-commerce systems. One good thing is that his very lean organization (which is actually a one-man operation) is based right within the comfort of his own home.

• Messrs. M and C and Ms. P were classmates in the VIE program and came up with their individual concepts of venture projects which they wanted to implement separately. Mr. M had his heart and vision in a restaurant, initially thinking of an upscale cafeteria-style food service for yuppies in a commercial center. Mr. C was into IT products and wanted to try distributing pre-paid voice portal cards. Ms. P did not have anything definite in mind yet except to tinker with beauty products or anything that would provide this type of product or service to women. During the middle of the program, the three joined forces to establish a foot spa outlet, but with a different twist. They offered foot spa services with Xiamen-style reflexology massage. Their initial set of equipment was brought from China and the supplies for the foot spa services were sourced locally. They looked for a good location and were able to spot one primarily using the criteria they learned from the program. They hired a Chinese national specializing in this type of massage and asked him to train their first group of spa workers. They put up the first branch in March 2002 and, by the end of the first month, they were on to building their second branch–out of the revenues from the first branch!

These are but a few of our lengthening list of exemplars–the successfully incubated entrepreneurs whose mind and passion jibe with the VIE’s program design. And as we incubate their enterprises, we must keep reminding them and ourselves to keep their passion up because an enterprise without a passionate entrepreneur behind it is not sustainable.

(Alejandrino Ferreria is the dean of the Asian Center for Entrepreneurship of the Asian Institute of Management. For further comments and inquiries, you may contact him at: [email protected]. Published "Entrepreneur’s Helpline" columns can be viewed on the AIM website at http//: www.aim.edu.ph).