Entrepreneurs meet the BID Network challenge

MANILA, Philippines - Marianne Olano wanted to be a journalist, but soon realized she needed to find a more financially-rewarding career.

Instead of going abroad, Olano went back to her hometown Naga City and explored the possibility of starting her own business. She started with handcrafted items like wind chimes and Christmas decor but hardly made money. At one trade fair she attended, people were crowding around one particular booth. Their product: costume jewelry from Cebu.

“This is something that will sell to anybody. It has no age limit – young people were buying, old people were buying, even guys were buying for their loved ones,” said Olano.

From that idea, she created Baycrafts, producing affordable jewelry made from pearls, glass, fiber, wood, crystals and seed. She even utilized recycled materials like used clothes.

She sells to wholesalers in Baguio City, Cebu, Manila and through the Internet. Her goal is to go retail nationwide.

Yearly, the BID Network gathers selected small and medium business owners from all over to the world to meet with investors, top banks and financial institutions in the Netherlands and vie for several business grants. It annually engages thousands of entrepreneurs, experts and investors from all over the world to stimulate entrepreneurship and economic growth in emerging markets. It has over 34,000 members and partners in 12 countries.

This year, 60 small and medium enterprises from Asia, Latin America Africa and Europe were selected to exhibit their business in the Fokker Terminal, Den Hague.

In 2007, Baycrafts was chosen as one of the finalists for the BID Network business awards. This year, Olano bagged a business retail grant of more than half a million pesos from Dutch bank ING. “I felt really overwhelmed and I am very proud to represent the Philippines in this competition,” said Olano before the announcement of her win.

With the prize money, she plans to create a different brand that will cater to the higher end domestic market. Aside from her enterprise which now employs 10 women, Olano has a training center where she helps local residents learn how to make similar crafts.

Three other Filipinos – Ronald Villanueva of Kawayan Tech Bamboo Bikes, Maria Lourdes Molina of EcoBloks, and Charmagne Cruz of Jacinto and Lirio Enterprises – were chosen as finalists in the BID Network in two categories: Women in Business and BID Network Award.

Villanueva’s Bamboo Bikes generated a lot of interest from Dutch buyers. “We are in a country that appreciates biking, and they are also environmentally conscious so the business potential here is very big,” said Villanueva who, with five other UP mountaineers, saw the potential of bamboo as the main frame of bicycles. He says bamboo is not only as strong as iron but it is also more comfortable and better during long rides. And because of its abundance in the Philippines, bamboo is a good material for a profitable business.

Molina’s Ecobloks are building blocks for kids made of scrap mahogany and pine trees from wood-working companies. Mother of a three-year-old, Molina buys these scraps, packs them in her attic and sells to toys and online stores across the country. In a little more than a year, Ecobloks is distributed in 10 retail and eight online stores.

Cruz, a new graduate of the Ateneo de Manila, and her classmates make bags and boxes from dried and processed water hyacinth, a plant that is abundant in the Philippines. They call this material “plant leather.”

Because the product is very new, Cruz hoped that by joining the BID Network, they would meet investors who will finance more research on the process of converting water hyacinth into plant leather.