Two Men Who Keep Women Walking In Style

It usually takes just one brave, forward-looking and success-oriented visionary to build a business that’s for keeps. Can you imagine if you multiply that by the power of two individuals who are single-minded in their definition of progress and success?

Inspired by its global "Keep Walking" campaign which encourages every individual to move forward to reach his goals, Johnnie Walker features two men who walk through their venture with determination and progress.

Fast-rising entrepreneurs Edward and Arnold Vitug are regularly attracting the opposite sex the way magnet attracts steel. And it’s got nothing to do with their good looks and great personalities. The thirtysomething cousins are the moving forces behind the successful chain of Chateau Borghesi stores that specialize in ladies’ footwear.

But while both Edward and Arnold admit that their job does have its own share of visual perks, it is actually a lot harder than it looks.

"Yes, we do enjoy the sight of pretty women shopping at our stores," says Edward, who handles the marketing aspect of Chateau Borghesi. "But the business is a lot more than that. And it does involve plenty of hard work."

"In my case, it certainly helped that I had some extensive background in the retail business," adds Arnold, a balikbayan who spent 13 years in the States before his cousin asked him to handle the day-to-day operations of their women’s shoe store. Arnold came home from the US with a business retailing degree that earned him a lengthy stint at The Men’s Warehouse, a retail store for men’s apparel.

For the last 25 years, Chateau Borghesi has kept women walking around in style. Today, it operates about six stores, most of them in Metro Manila. It’s a business that Fernando Vitug II, Edward’s father, has nurtured successfully over the years, after originally investing in it with a partner. Completing his marketing degree at De La Salle University, Edward was eventually drawn to the business because of the challenge of treading uncharted territory.

I joined the business sometime in 1984 when I infused fresh capital into it," Edward recalls. "Back then, I took a shoe designing course to learn the ropes of the trade. When I got involved with Chateau, I was originally assigned to handle purchasing and I had a hard time determining what would be good for our customers. The ladies’ shoes looked all the same to me. So I also tried to constantly observe my female friends as well as the girlfriends of my male buddies. By always looking at the shoes they were wearing, I was able to appreciate the designs that looked good on them. It also somewhat familiarized me with women’s buying habits, at least as far as footwear was concerned."

But Edward and Arnold learned that it was not enough to know women’s buying habits. They are aware of the fact that about 200 shoe stores cater to the same market and that 90 percent of their direct competitors are managed by women.

However, Edward is unfazed. "I’d rather sell women’s shoes because their turnover is a lot faster compared to men’s shoes. Women buy a new pair for just about every occasion and many of their clothes need specific pairs of matching shoes. Which is very much unlike guys for whom three or four pairs would last for a year or more."

And if Chateau’s sales have remained steady in recent years, it’s because of the innovations the creative cousins have introduced in the store’s operations.

Says Arnold: "One thing I noticed about Filipino customers, compared to their counterparts in the US, is that they’re not used to good customer service. So I introduced the concept here to our sales people through a seminar I myself conducted and I guess it worked because sales have gone up in all our branches since then."

Arnold hopes to further improve customer service by introducing more value-added services and concepts like free shoe shine and a new tie-up with certain companies to benefit employees like VIP (as in Very Impressive Person) Accounts. This will allow the employees to avail themselves of cheaper and different styles offered by the store. The store, in turn, benefits from enjoying a captive market in this kind of promotion.

Traditionally, Chateau Borghesi shoes have been known to cater to a very conservative market segment between 24 and 45 years old. But the Vitug cousins are slowly changing such tradition by diversifying their products and introducing lines like Shindig for the very young and trendy, and Gabrielle, which are cheaper, good quality work shoes.

"To succeed in this business, one has to keep himself inspired by the changes of the prevailing times," says Edward. "We progress as we keep walking with the ever-changing shoe designs of the times."

Although a lot of their time is spent in business, they do find quality time with their families, playing golf whenever they can, and enjoying a drink (or two or three) of their favorite Johnnie Black Label scotch whisky.

Edward also manages two other businesses: Vitse Trading, which imports raw materials for shoes and bags, and Simple Clothing Sales, a garments distributor. For the last three years, his weekday mornings are also devoted to playing the stock market. "There’s something about the challenges of stock trading that I can relate with my work here at Chateau in the sense that it’s equally challenging and exciting even though it’s more of a slow and calculated risk. But you can never be too relaxed or complacent about it. If you are, someone behind you will simply overtake and leave you behind."

Says Arnold: "Patience is the most important thing in life for me. And I’m glad that I’m in a business where patience really pays off."

Edward and Arnold can both talk the talk because as their thriving tag team has demonstrated, they can pretty much walk the talk.