7th Regional Cebu Retail Conference Shares Timeless Principles in Retailing

The 7th Cebu Regional Retail Conference nailed it with timeless principles in retailing. With the theme, “Back to Basic: Timeless Principles in Retailing”, the participants were treated to a boxful of nuggets on the Philippine trends in the retail industry, marketing in retailing, handling operations in the industry, and success stories from successful Filipino entrepreneurs of today.

Kicked off by Philippine Retailers Association’s (PRA’s) national Vice President Atty. Paul Santos, the participants learned that trends now include keen competition in the food industry where there will be new players in food distribution, foreign investments and industry consolidation; malls today are said to be operating their own retail store concepts; diversification; and increase in number of tourists. With the latter according to Santos, 7.4 million Filipinos are expected to be employed in the influx of tourists in the country in 2016, up from the existing 3.8 million today. He said that for this year, there are 5.5 million visitors targeted to come to the Philippines. “Shopping and tourism go hand in hand,” expressed Santos in relation to the positive contribution of the tourist traffic to retailing.

The PRA officer also made mention on the impact of the use of technology in retailing. He shared that 35 million Filipino use the Internet, and it increases 44% annually. In a statistics he presented during the conference, he showed that 3% of the online Filipinos have tried e-commerce or done business, retailing per se, through the use of the Internet. Not only that, the statistics also reveals that 45% of the people shop online or purchase products in the Internet. “The Internet is an opportunity for us to do more, to have a better business…Now is the good time, more than any, to use the Net. It’s a wide open market,” remarked Santos.

Next in line in the lecturers was former managing director of The Nielsen Company (Philippines), Inc. and now senior consultant and chief brand adviser of Mansmith and Fielders Inc., a training and consultancy company in the Philippines offering a wide range of marketing and sales, strategy and innovation courses in Asia. He tackled on principles in marketing a successful retailing brand. GMP Franchise Developers Inc. President Armando Bartolome on the hand, talked about timeless principles in operating a successful retailing company. Bartolome emphasized on ‘focused leadership’ of the forerunner to his or her workforce relayed to the customers, and perseverance in the business. “If you don’t lead, no one will follow. Define your company’s destination and direction. Effective leadership must include defining success and failure,” he said in his presentation.

Bartolome advised to develop a ‘warrior’ mentality in business which means always keeping up with the latest trends and to not stop innovating because competition will always be around. If one decides to be passive and complacent due to success, then continued growth will never be a guarantee. The guest speaker also gave some tips to the crowd who are curious about franchise businesses.

In the afternoon, the success stories of the successful companies of today were There was Max’s Group of Companies and Krispy Kreme Doughnuts Philippines, Mang Inasal, and ZALORA Philippines. Top secrets such as passion, hardwork and innovation were salient points stressed by the distinguished executives from these companies. Jim Fuentebella of the Max’s Group spoke on branding as a key to success. Edgar ” Injap” Sia meanwhile shared the humble beginnings of Mang Inasal through its journey to where it is now. Paulo Campos III also valued on maximizing technology to create a successful brand.

Panel discussions were also held in the morning and afternoon sessions with some of the successful Cebuano entrepreneurs such as Raki Urbina of the Laguna Group, Melanie Ng of Ng Khai Development, jay Aldeguer of the Islands Group and from the commerce industry Lito Maderazo and Prudencio Gesta of the Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Indsutry (CCCI). The 7th Cebu Regional Retailing Conference was organized by the Philippine Retailers Association Cebu chapter headed by its president Pablo “Jun” Yap.