A ‘sari-sari’ store crusade

It would be hard not to notice someone  like Paolo Benigno Aquino IV, endeared to his family and friends, business associates and the public by his nickname “Bam,” who often talks about the plight of the less privileged because he is so convincingly passionate about them.

He may be quite a talker, but what makes him different is that he can translate all his speeches of advocacy into action through his myriad of personal and public involvements from product endorsements to business ventures, volunteer work, and government service.  He said he funnels part of his talent fees from doing commercials to his advocacies.

He is listed in the exclusive “Notable Persons” of the “Ateneo de Manila University (AdMU), among the several Aquinos that include his own cousin, President Benigno Aquino III. 

At 34 years old, Bam is currently the president of a micro-financing company, Micro Ventures Inc. (MVI), which he founded with a friend Mark Jonathan Ruiz, after leaving the National Youth Commission (NYC) as chairperson and executive director in June 2006.  MVI operates the social enterprise program known as “Hapinoy” (for happy Filipino), whose logo is a tan-complexioned, version of the smiley with a mop of hair.

With Hapinoy Community Stores (CS), or “mom-and-pop” retail stores now hitting 350 all over the Philippines, Bam joins the big league of socio-economic entrepreneurs who puts their business mind where their heart is.  Recognition and citations in this field come from PLDT, Go-Negosyo, Ernest & Young, the Ten Outstanding Young Men (TOYM) and the Asia Society’s 21 Philippine Leaders.

A summa cum laude graduate of management engineering from the Ateneo de Manila University (AdMU), Bam points out that the sari-sari store businesses will always be a distinct feature of the Philippine economy as it comprises at least 30 percent of the retail industry.

“Helping the poor get on their feet through our market intervention and be self-sustaining,” is how Bam describes the pleasure and profit of operating his enterprise.  His project, he said, is a sought-after model for a new type of non-governmental organization (NGO). “We are a new model, the first to blaze this trail and there are many outside the Philippines who want to know more about it,” Bam enthused during an interview with The Manila Times.

“We want our organization to be an example of a model which is sustainable, saleable and has a true impact on communities, where change is ongoing but at the same time can operate on its own in terms of expenses and create value not only for its owners but also their partners. Many CS owners have felt the change— their children now reach high school at least, and mud floorings have been tiled, for example.  The changes are concrete,” Bam proudly narrated.

Just like the saying, “give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach him to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” Bam explained that more than a hundred small traditional Philippine NGOs have ceased operation, particularly during the financial crisis of 2009, because they operated on a dole-out basis and were just trying to pass around their funds and assistance from one hand to the other—and when the funds were gone they didn’t know what to do.”

Truly a visionary and leader, manifested early on as a young president of AdMU’s college student council, Bam said he somehow instinctively knew what gaps he could fill in the poverty alleviation programs both by government and the private sector.  From being the youngest head of a government agency at 24 years old, the transition to MVI, he said, was bound to happen.

As NYC official and an assistant to then President Cory Aquino’s office, Bam was able to travel and see things in a different perspective. Bam said he knew exactly where to direct his sails when he left government. But it is not all about money, Bam clarifies, it’s about doing service and being happy about it, making an impact on other people’s lives and honoring the less fortunate without being worn out by compassion fatigue.  “Our project is sustained and is a market solution to a social problem, that is why it is catching attention.”

Ruiz, one of his old Ateneo friends, then left his job as a senior management personnel of Unilever, to join him at MVI. Bam credits Ruiz for his “business sense.”  The added bonus in this time-tested friendship is that in 2007, Bam joined the board of Rags2Riches, a company founded by Ruiz’s wife.

Rags2Riches bag products have become in demand among Manila’s fashionable society and in Europe where they sell as haute couture accessories. The bags are made from recycled packaging materials, deftly designed and cobbled, giving the impression that artisans worked on them in atelier rather than in the Metro Manila backyard workshops.

“We connect them to a market— that’s our intervention.”  With bulk ordering, for example, obviously, if you’re (an ordinary) sari-sari store owner, you won’t be able to get by if the discounts are low.”  Until then, Bam noted, no one was helping small businesses grow at the least capital.  “It’s very hard for a micro business on its own, without any capital, without any intervention, to become a bigger business. In fact, I would say it’s really impossible.” 

“They need some support and that support will come from different organizations and we’re just one of them.  We help the base of the pyramid (BOP) to be able to move up the different interventions we do and they are our partners who are the micro-finance institutions, corporations, the NGOs, and we basically create a suite of products and services that they can avail of Hapinoy is that program.”

Through the Hapinoy program, Bam and his colleagues, service the BOP constituency in the rural areas of the Philippines via partnerships with sari-sari stores.  “That is why you don’t encounter Hapinoy stores in Metro Manila, they’re busy in the provinces,” he pointed out.

Hapinoy Stores  presently concentrate on such daily commodities as sugar, vinegar and condiments like dried pepper, toyo, patis and ketchup, apparently the flagship product, all packaged with the distinctive logo.

With a micro loan of between P3,000 to P5,000, a qualified person can start up after a training session in inventory, management and the like. Unlike in non-Hapinoy sari-sari stores, where owners also buy by “tingi,” from bigger retailers, the CS store goodies are ordered in bulk, thus saving owners as much as P20, for example, in the case of ketchup.  MVI partners with the financing arm, Center for Agriculture and Rural Development (CARD), a Gremeen-like credit system for small business that has recently won the Ramon Magsaysay Award.

At present, there are about 1.3 million borrowers with the repayment rate at 99.7 percent. “It is a self-sustaining scheme. It may just be a minor shift from traditional NGOs, who mean well but just couldn’t sustain themselves, Bam beams.

Helping the poor is a day-to-day process, a little step at a time, Bam reminds. “We’re often too enamored with major, sweeping changes that we fail to see the smaller points.”  With this environment, only such major NGOs like Habitat for Humanity—which focuses on sweat-equity housing—and the World Vision for orphans—would survive, added Bam.

Bam is among the original batch of Philippine Young Leaders chosen by the Asia Society Philippine Foundation (ASPF) in 2006. They are an elite group of young achievers, who are bound to achieve even more, and are presented a chance to also interact with their counterparts in other Asian countries at the annual “Asia 21 Young Leaders Summit.”

As head of the annual TAYO (Ten Accomplished Youth Organizations), awards, Bam said that he saw the future in them despite some TAYO organizations having street gangs among them. A former TAYO winner, Tuklas Katutubo, empowers indigenous peoples such as the Manobo and the Igorots.

When he joined the NYC, Bam said he had to work right away on having the voice of the youth input in all legislations. “Young people always have ideas, always very participative, always forward-looking.  We are such a bright people, and the youth can make the Philippines even brighter.”

(This series on Filipino leaders is a Project of the Asia Society and The Manila Times.)