Success Story: Making it big in the export market

They say business is a gamble, Jenifer and Maribelle Cruz must have played their gambling game right, as their company is now reaping dollars, from a P5,000 startup capital investment back in 1990.

Armed with their experience as export company employees, the husband and wife tandem established the 33 Point 3 Exports Inc. and manufactured baskets and other home furnishing and fashion jewelry products in their small rented apartment.

Now, the couple’s export business is one of the suppliers of signature brands like Liz Claiborne, Marks & Spencer, among others for its fashion accessories, and large store chains in the United States and Europe for its home furnishing products.

Jenifer brought his family from Pangasinan to Cebu in the late 1980s, for a job assignment while he was working for an export firm, his wife also got a job here in a similar business specializing in fashion accessory exports.

Driven by deep desire to support their three boys (at that time), and pressure to pay the borrowed P5,000 from an informal community lending, Jenifer and Maribelle were able to make partnership with export buyers based in Manila to market their products abroad.

The couple started making uniquely woven Buri-made peacock chairs, and flower baskets initially marketed to domestic consumers, and later got the attention from export buyers.

With two to four people helping them in their small home-based manufacturing, the couple strived harder to increase overseas demand of their products and swallowed discouragements to keep their business in the not-so-well times, and fast forward 13 years later, the company built a four-story building in Maguikay, Mandaue City in 2003 as their manufacturing center and headquarter office.

The 33 Point 3 Exports, is now one of the largest export manufacturers for high-end home furnishing products, and fashion accessories serving not only the United States, but Europe, Asia, Japan and Australia, and soon will penetrate the big China market.

About 5,000 families in Bohol are now mainly depending their livelihood in Cruz’s export business as raw material suppliers, and some weavers for the highly in-demand home furnishings which used indigenous raw materials in the Philippines specializing on Hapao-weaving style.

"We were the ones who introduced the Hapao weaving in 1996, up to now it is the most sellable weaving style for our home furnishing products, and different forms and uses of baskets," said Jenifer.

The Hapao-weaving, which has also become the generic term used by their clients abroad is an intricate design of weaving that uses, a mixed of rattan, nito, raw materials. These indigenous raw materials grew abundantly in Bohol province.

The company is the regular supplier of large to medium store chains in United States like Target Store, Crate and Barrel, Pier One, among others.

"There was a time that we supplied the Banana Republic brand," Jenifer said.

Majority of the company’s production is into making the home furnishings, 15 percent of which are fashion accessories.

Because of the couple’s successful and encouraging story in exporting home furnishing and fashion accessories, the 33 Point 3 Exports Inc. is one of the few awardees of the prestigious Golden Shell Awards.

Despite the challenging environment in exports, with the stiffer competition and other countries trying to capture the Philippines’ share in the home furnishing and fashion accessories market, Jenifer is determined to take the business farther, not only for his own profit interest, but mainly because of the families that depend their daily livelihood on the business.

Inspired by the couple’s worth imitating courage in business, which started mainly from "scratch", the Canadian government, through the PEARL-2 project had also extended its support for the company which provides employment to rural residents in Bohol, and the unemployable population in Cebu, as their sub-contractors.