Sandlot tales

As a child, Edgardo Vasquez played with the gravel and sand that was his family’s business. Today, he has expanded his playground to roof tiles, housing bricks, and other materials that goes into building a home.

"I see myself as an inventor-entrepreneur. I am always looking for new ways to improve our operations and to use our products," said the president of the Vasquez Group, which recently celebrated its 30th anniversary.

On His Own

The eldest of seven children of Ernesto Vasquez, the young Vasquez was given a store to manage–the family’s second–after college. When the store diversified from the original sand and gravel business to the sale of old-fashioned bricks and branded plywood, the younger Vasquez incorporated his own company, Vazquez Commmodities, Inc., with a capital of P125,000. (VazCom is now the holding company of the various Vazquez enterprises)

"Having filled up the store as well as the road and the land adjoining the store with building materials, I lived in the store so I could watch my inventory after closing hours," said Vasquez.

VazCom further expanded into the sale of façade and fencing bricks. On its own, the company had some of these big bricks, which measure 2x 2 x 8 and 2 x 4 x 8, cut into smaller, more sellable bricks.

"We initially had the bricks cut by a factory in Marikina. Eventually, we fabricated our own high-speed brick cutters. We also reprocessed the bricks into other colors, which made our store along EDSA look literally bloody red," said Vasquez, who patented the design and utility of the bricks called "dondon".

When manufacturers of fencing bricks refused to sell more fencing bricks to the company, VazCom looked for another supplier. The search ended with a backyard brick maker in barangay Cavinta in Sta. Barbara, Pangasinan. The company taught the brick-maker and his neighbors how to make 2 x 2 and 1 x 2 bricks and bought whatever was produced. (Today, Cavinta is the biggest income earner and employs the most number of people in Pangasinan)

Acquisition

In the mid-1980s, the Vasquez Group ventured into manufacturing, putting up Vasquez Concrete to acquire and operate a tegula factory foreclosed by the Development Bank of the Philippines. The Laguna-based factory produces 30,000 to 40,000 tiles per day.

"The tegula roof tiles accounts for just 20% to 30% of the total roof market, which is dominated by GI sheets that, in recent years, have innovated in appearance to look like roof tiles. We think tegula can capture another 10% of the market," said Vasquez, who has come up with a Lego-like building solution that makes use of concrete panels (made up of tegula and bricks), columns, tiding, and tegula roofing.

To handle this new business, another company called Vazbuilt was incorporated. A regular feature of Vazbuilt pre-fabricated homes are garden pavers, which the company manufactures from a huge mothballed paving machine bought in a builders trade fair in Australia. The company currently uses only eight of the machine’s 14 molds.

"We are out to prove that retailing pre-fabricated concrete homes to middle- and low-cost projects is viable. Vazbuilt has a catalog of home models that range in price from P350,000 to P3.5 million," said Vasquez. "In fact, we are now packaging a franchising program where potential franchisees can sell Vazbuilt homes over the country by first becoming a trader of all VazCom products."