'Just got lucky'

Ferdinand “Ferdie” Ong reverses the equation of those who figured out that success is 80 percent perspiration and 20 percent inspiration. Ferdie believes the formula is more like this: Success is 80 percent luck and 20 percent hard work.

He says he has seen people work hard — but miss the boat, too.

“Timing is part of luck as well,” he hastens to add. “I mean, if you do a concept and the timing is bad, no matter how good it is, it might not flourish.” Ferdie knows whereof speaks. His business success is a reflection of that formula. Though not born poor, he used to ride the jeepney to school in upper-crust Xavier School in Greenhills, San Juan. As he alighted from his jeepney, he would look enviably at his Mercedes Benz-borne classmates who were escorted by their yayas to their classrooms.

Ferdie now drives a luxury car and lives in Forbes Park. His ticket to the big time was a venture the family wasn’t into — luxury furniture and appliances (The family was into export of handicrafts.).

Having drilled into the crowded business wall to make a niche, the 31-year-old has brought his store, Living Innovations on Ayala Avenue, to the top of its class. The 700-sq.-meter furniture showroom, which Ferdie set up in 2002 with a loan from his father, Antonio Ong, boasts such luxury furniture and kitchen brands as Minotti, Dedon, Bulthaup and Gaggenau. His clients include those who have avenues in Makati named after them — am just saying. But they also include a few others who look like they can’t afford a Monobloc, but end up buying a P2-million Minotti sofa. “He wore shorts, tsinelas, but he just pointed out and was quickly done. Then we got the payment and we delivered,” recalls Ferdie of his unlikely customer.

Ferdie was introduced to Minotti through a magazine article. He was intrigued by the brand, then an up-and-coming high-end furniture brand based in Milan. “Nobody really knew much about it. The Minotti guys in Milan asked me, ‘Ferdie, are you willing to lose money for the first two years?’ And my dad said, ‘Go!’ And that’s when they knew that we were committed for long term. The furniture business will not make you rich, I mean tycoon rich. It’s something you do because you love it. But two years after we got the brand, it became very, very popular. So we really had good timing.”

You could now actually say Ferdie is part of the furniture, so to speak, in many an elegant home in the metro’s enclaves.

His first client was a newly married Filipino-Chinese businessman who bought P3-million worth of furniture. That set him off to a good start.

“I was doing everything, a virtual one-man team. Nagbebenta, nag-dedesign, lahat talaga. One guy doing everything. Swerte din talaga kami that we had clients that were very mabait, which really helped me get the confidence to close more sales. I think for the past four years, we have had no bad accounts, you know, people running away from us. Things have changed a bit after the financial crisis, but still it was a good run for us and we were very happy with it.”

Ferdie shares that location, location, location helped cement the success of Living Innovations. He rented space at the Shangri-La Makati Arcade, near such stores as Louis Vuitton. His door virtually had a brass plate that declared: “Expensive.”

“I think that’s part of the whole strategy. If they can’t afford the stuff, they won’t come in,” says Ferdie. “When they come to me, they already know what they want to buy. It’s like you don’t have to hard-sell the stuff. I think people who buy luxury stuff, they already know what they want. It’s just a matter of giving them the right information.”

To illustrate what he means by not “hard-selling,” Ferdie doesn’t have a sales person immediately near the entrance of the store. “We want the client to experience the whole shop first, go around.”

Ferdie says that time spent with every person who walks into Living Innovations is time well spent. “For us, it’s an investment because even if they don’t buy now, maybe they’ll buy later if they have the money, or if they know people who do. So you have to treat everybody equally.”

Another secret to his store’s success is that Ferdie’s word is as sturdy as a Gaggenau kitchen counter top.

“I think when you promise something, you gotta deliver. When I say something, even if I have to lose money just to make my promise come through, I’ll do it. We’ve already done it a couple of times wherein we had to replace sofa sets with bigger sofa sets. There was one time that a customer complained that her sofa was ‘amoy pusa.’ Apparently, when it was delivered to their house, may pusa na dumating then nagwiwi doon sa sofa. I didn’t want to argue, so we just changed it to a bigger sofa set. There was another incident when the delivery of a kitchen set was delayed. So we just had it flown in, the whole kitchen set. The airplane freight cost more than the whole kitchen, but we still did it.” Just to keep his word.

His brands, like Minotti, are so high end not even the local five-star hotels could afford them yet in commercial quantity. Ferdie’s brands are instead found in private residences.

Because Living Innovations cater to the A market, it didn’t falter with the global recession. “If clients used to spend P10 million, maybe now they spend P6 million,” Ferdie laughs gratefully.

Because most of the furniture he sells are modular, he just encourages his clients to buy a starter set, then to just keep on adding.

Ferdie credits his father for being a visionary, for dreaming big. When they were still in the infant stage of their export business, the elder Ong told his wife Felicitas, “One day, we will own a building.” And they did, the Crisanta building across Valle Verde.

The Ongs raised their kids to be judicious with their money, and Ferdie recalls that he owned his first branded T-shirt only when he was in the seventh grade — a Giordano. At 31, he is now partial to Armani.

But Ferdie’s ventures have not always been successful. His first venture, at age 23, was a restaurant in the Malate area. It soon folded up but it was a “successful failure” because it taught Ferdie, a Manufacturing Engineering graduate of De La Salle University, the lessons he needed to make it.

“I learned humility, how to deal with people, how to listen to other people. Because when you are young, akala mo what you learn in school, that’s all you need. Magaling na ako, matalino na ako. Tapos nag-fail yung business ko. Biglang uy, kailangan kong makinig muna, I have to listen. I owe my friends a lot because kahit nagkamali ako doon, never nilang pinamukha sa akin, ‘O, ayan, nagkamali ka’.”

After his success with Living Innovations, “One of my clients told me that before, they knew the son from the father, now they know the father from the son,” Ferdie says proudly.

I guess based on his equation, this hardworking young man also just got lucky.

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