Polycrafts Cebu from class buddies to business partners

CEBU, Philippines - Five buddies are set to graduate from college one week from now. But the business that they put up as a class requirement one year and five months ago is not graduating with them.

For the group of Jomes Kemuel Ibañez, Kevin Cua, Dominique Suzanne Calienta, Zaira Eguia and Virgilona Lurot, they believe learning the value of trust, pursuing passion and stretching one’s patience to its limits are three things they wouldn’t have fully understood if education was all confined to the four walls of a classroom.

Being exposed to the ups and downs of running a business of their own made these Business Administration Double Major in Marketing and Entrepreneurship students from the University of San Carlos appreciate simple things that are often overlooked when one solely relies on books for learning.

Armed with a vision to promote a social cause and develop a good business enterprise, the group ventured into selling products made out of recycled polypropylene (PP), a thermoplastic polymer used in a wide variety of applications including textiles, stationery, plastic parts and reusable containers.  

In May 2012, the group launched PolyCrafts Cebu. The initial investment was P90,000 equally shared by the group.

They then began by collecting scrap PP and recyclable wastes from a couple of junkshops in Downtown Cebu, which openhandedly gave them their thrown away items for free.

With a little sense of art and tweaking, the scrap materials are transformed into useful items.

“It’s slowly growing, but for something that started that way, you don’t expect it to quickly grow that fast,” said Calienta who handles sales and marketing.

Ibañez is in-charge of human resource, Eguia of operations, Lurot of finance while Cua is the general manager.

Calienta recalled that they started off with selling recycled bags of different designs. Soon the business diversified its product line to encompass box organizers, pencil cases, along with their best-selling key chains, and more recently, they came up with a new key chain design which they branded as “danggit,” after the famous dried fish product of Cebu.

Since their products are not a commodity, the group admitted that they have to continuously market them. Their primary target market is companies, while individual end-users serve as their secondary market.

The group’s original investment was recovered seven months or so through the business.

“We don’t have a physical store; we largely depend online for orders and referrals,” Calienta said. “But we already have a network of customers who regularly places their orders. We also have consignments at Ant Hill, Sophie Ayala and in trade fairs as well.”

The group said that while they are scheduled to graduate in a week, they are determined to carry on the business and renew their permit from the Department of Trade and Industry once it expires this December.

Challenges

As a social side of their business, they have decided to partner with a specific community which will be highly involved in the first phase of production, the weaving. The residents of this community will be paid for every craft they have produced.

The group then convenes to check the quality of the items and do the final finishing touches.

But they acknowledged that working with their partner-community can sometimes be challenging especially in educating the people on the importance to meet work deadlines and quality standards.

Still, the group maintained the zest to continue providing livelihood to their community and did not stop to advance their advocacy on empowering underprivileged communities and women.

“Unlike regular companies where if their employees are not functioning they can easily be reprimanded, with the case of our partner-community, we really talk to them constantly and make them understand our goals and recognize that they have special needs to be addressed as well,” Calienta said.

It also took a long time before the business could finally take a full swing, considering their status as full-time students.

But the group said they managed to overcome time constraints by, what else but, proper time management, adding they had to enroll themselves together just to get the same free time schedules.

After graduation

“Majority of us after graduation will pursue our career here in Cebu, so we’re trying to really keep the business, and at the same time, pursue our career. What we will do is we will be modifying some rules, implementing new protocols. We will manage our time to adjust to our career,” Ibañez said.

The group said they will basically become an online business. They have scheduled cut-offs in place, constant meetings, will not be leaving their careers behind in the process.

“Communicate nalang sa weavers sa production. Kay naanad na mi sa regular schedule namo nga you have school and business, so it’s like shifting to career and business,” the young entrepreneurs said.

“So karon kay more customers are looking for the business na, so sayang siya i-give up. Customers are starting to ask when the next shipment will be, things like that. Aside from that, we find our customers to be a source of ideas to keep improving,” said Eguia.

For Eguia, it’s important to believe in your product. “If you yourself don’t believe that your product is saleable, how do you expect other people to buy it?”

Eguia said trying to convince people to use recyclable products and involving environmental advocacies in businesses are important knowing that calamities are very rampant nowadays. She added that the youth should also take advantage of technology.

For Ibañez, entrepreneurship is not a one-way avenue. “Daghan siya’g obstacles along the way. You cannot just learn it from the books lang or theory. In the real world, you will see nga di siya applicable, sometimes you need to tweak it a little bit para ma apply sa business.”

One nice thing about youth, they said, is they have fresh, out-of-the-book ideas. They don’t stick with traditional ideas.  They know that by nature, every business is different--it’s how the people within those businesses make use of their resources and talent that matters. (FREEMAN)