Small Business Owners - Want to Achieve Greatness in Your Business? Be Enthusiastic!

I grew up in a family that share the common belief that a stable job is a solution to avoid poverty. It is hard for me to prove my point to them that I wanted to start as a small business owner while I am having my daily job but I will not be an employee forever. For them, climbing the corporate ladder is the best goal in life. For me, creating my own ladder so that other people will climb my own ladder. I do not want to work for other but I want people work for me, for all of us. But why did I continue pursuing my dream of becoming an entrepreneur despite of criticisms I am receiving? Because I am ENTHUSIASTIC! Yes, I am enthusiastic in everything I do especially when I started to set up my small business together with a couple of friends.


I learned that before you put up a small business, you need to be enthusiastic about it. You need to be so full of energy and be positive to everything. That is the key to be a successful business owner. When we are thinking of what business to put up, there are a lot of ideas that came, but when we think of our current business which is "personalized items," we suddenly became so positive! And right now, even all of us are full time employees, we can still manage our small business. You can even take a peek of our small business here: http://diversityclothing.multiply.com/ 

BE ENTHUSIASTIC!!!

                                                 http://www.flickr.com/photos/15923063@N00/

I found an article here about this topic. I totally agree with the author of this article. Read on!!

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Before you start groaning at the thought of another "article," just hear me out. Small business owners, you have to be enthusiastic about your business. You have to literally eat, breathe, drink and sleep your business. If you don't enjoy what you are doing it will show. It will show in your articles, your blog posts, everything you do. You have to love what it is you are doing to be successful in your own business. If you have started a business just because someone told you that you could make a lot of money doing it, stop right now and go get a job. You won't be successful because you are in business for the wrong reason. In order to start a business you can be enthusiastic about, think about something you do just for fun. Do you like to write? Do give unsolicited advice to strangers? Are you always making something? Do you sew, crochet or knit? Are you a techie that can create a website in 45 minutes flat? Just because something comes easy to you doesn't mean it comes easy to someone else.

You must do your research to determine if you can make money at what you have skills in. Nothing kills enthusiasm worse than not making any money in your business. Before you start a small business, join some forums related to what you think you might want to do. Look at what the members are posting. These people are looking for a solution to a problem. If you have skills related to a problem that you see over and over again on the forums, you may have a viable idea for a business. Don't just stop there with your research.

Next you want to see how much it will cost you market this business. The best gauge for this is to see what other people are paying in your niche. This will tell you how much you need to budget for advertising. You also need to see how many incoming links you will need on your website. The best way to do this is to go to Google, type in some keywords you may want to use for your business and observe the websites that are on the first page. Take the top ten and put them in Alexa. This will tell you how many incoming links they have. This is important to you because in order to get on the first page of Google you need to beat the people that are on the first page already. If the people that are already on the first page have thousands of links you may want to think about another niche.

Running a small business can be a rewarding experience. It does take hard work and enthusiasm to sustain a small business. There will be some challenges for you to face. With the right support system in place, you can run the successful small business you have been dreaming about.

Article Source:http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=DeAnna_Troupe

Businesses you can start from P51,000 to P100,000

Wanted to put up a small business and you've got at least P50,000 to P100,000 in savings. Then it's time to withdraw them from the bank that earns just 1% interest a year and start to grow it more and enjoy the life of a small business owner.

My favorite magazine Entrepreneur helps a lot of small business enthusiasts including me and this article will give you list of small business ideas with your P50,000:  Part 2 of businesses you can start from P1k to P100k ENJOY READING!!! 

P51,000 TO P100,000

Organic Produce

http://www.flickr.com/photos/97479012@N00/

Pharmacy

http://www.flickr.com/photos/94805433@N00/

Travel Agency

http://www.flickr.com/photos/48889087714@N01/

When entrepreneurs put in P51,000 to P100,000 of their own money to start a business, they had better be sure that they are passionate enough about it to learn as much as possible about the business from the very start and to run it hands-on afterwards if need be. 

This is the common thread in the experience of Mara Pardo de Tavera of Mara's Organic Market in Makati City, of Carlos Granados of Farmacia Divina Gracia in San Fernando City, La Union, and of Pamela Alfaro of Ashta Holidays Travel & Tours in Mandaluyong City.

In 1995, at a time when the organic food movement was still at its infancy, Mara Pardo de Tavera established one of Asia's first organic markets with around P50,000 in initial capital. All that she wanted at first was an organic market where she could source food for her family's needs, but once she got her organic market started, it soon evolved into a personal advocacy for getting the public to know the benefits of going organic.

To achieve her objective, Pardo de Tavera had gone around the country looking for suppliers. During her trips, however, she realized that although there was potential for organic producers, there was hardly any market for organic products. "Suppliers were even asking us why I was the only one asking them about organic production," she recalls. 

After a couple of years, however, she finally got enough reliable suppliers of organic products and started to look for space for her organic market. She asked the Zobel de Ayala family if they could spare one for her in what is now at Makati City's Greenbelt Mall, which was then a park. After some time, the Ayalas gave her and her husband Raymond a space at the park for free. They then put up a shop that was to become Mara's Organic Market today.

For Carlos Granados, the love between him and his pharmacist wife provided the inspiration for putting up their own pharmacy, Farmacia Divina Gracia, in San Fernando City in 1990. "Since my wife was a pharmacist and I used to work as a manager for a pharmaceutical company, we thought we would have good chemistry on a pharmaceutical business," he recalls.

He then borrowed P80,000 from his parents for capital and bought the small drug store of his mother-in-law, renaming it after his wife Divina Gracia (now deceased). He kept his regular job while his wife tended the store. "It was my wife who knew which items were fast-moving, so I took responsibility of buying them from bigger drugstores so we can stock and sell them in our own store," he recalls.

In the case of Pamela Alfaro, putting up her own travel agency was a dream borne out of her passion for traveling. "I started traveling in 2001 when I was studying tourism," she recalls. "When I saw Hong Kong during one of those travels, I knew that running my own travel agency was what I wanted." But she decided to work in related fields first to gain valuable experience.  

She initially worked with the Department of Tourism to become familiar with the tourism business, and later took a job in the United Kingdom as a liaison officer of the Birmingham City Council's change management group. In 2006, she returned to the Philippines and trained herself in how to use travel-booking software and in the legal requirements of the business.

Confident that she had now forearmed herself, Alfaro then took a leap of faith and put up Ashta Holidays Travel & Tours, using P100,000 of her own savings as initial capital. To keep costs down, she put up her business office in her own condominium and used free booking software.

Keys to success

Often, one single decision becomes the key to the success of a business. This decision may seem minor at the time it's made, but it could have wide-reaching effects on the future of the business.

Pardo de Tavera's naming her organic market after herself and making herself its spokeswoman was one such decision. A very private person in the beginning, she recalls that she didn't like the idea of using her name for the business or of giving interviews to the media about it.

What prompted her to name the store after herself was the fact that several organic markets were calling themselves as such although they were not actually selling any organic produce. To her, therefore, those organic markets had no credibility at all and she didn't want her own organic store to be identified with them.

Pardo de Tavera then thought of getting a celebrity to epitomize her organic market but couldn't find anyone suitable. Ultimately, with the encouragement of her husband and a friend who was a public relations professional, she realized and decided that she herself was perfect for the role. "After all, I was both the owner and biggest customer of the market that I had in mind," she says. 

For Granados, that pivotal decision was to manage his business hands-on: "I want to believe that I can be successful in any endeavor. I don't want to entertain failures in life. This is why I decided to practice hands-on management in my business from the very start."

And for Alfaro, that most important decision was not to be daunted by problems along the way and to pursue her passion relentlessly. "If you don't have passion, the business will fail," she says, "but if you have passion, you will pursue the business no matter what."

Roadblocks notwithstanding

Along the way, it is inevitable for every entrepreneur to encounter challenges, whether simple or complex. The first few years of the business usually prove most difficult, as reality sometimes dashes even the most carefully laid out plans. Indeed, among the most common problems encountered by startups are supply roadblocks and operational hitches arising from organizational weakness.

For Pardo de Tavera, a major problem lay in convincing the public of the benefits of organic food at a time when it still wasn't a popular lifestyle choice among Filipinos. Another major drawback was the difficulty she was to encounter in finding suppliers for her organic market.

In Alfaro's case, she had to deal with government gridlock and reluctance in giving business to her startup travel agency.

And as to the fledgling pharmacy of Granados, it had to endure low sales during its first few months like any other business.

In the face of these challenges to their businesses, the three entrepreneurs took decisive action in ways that other startup entrepreneurs can learn from.

Pardo de Tavera engaged the mass media to promote her business and arranged for celebrities to visit her market, creating public awareness and curiosity about her market in particular and about organic products in general.

For both Alfaro and Granados, the key to success was continuously improving their customer service. In the case of Alfaro's travel agency, in particular, its efforts to customize travel packages helped differentiate it from other travel agencies and made its services more attractive to clients.

She explains: "Your travel agency has become very personalized in its service if your clients can tell you, 'Pam, I want this and I want that.' This is precisely what my agency has become. I try to give them what they want and I tell them all their options. And I try to be available anytime to my clients, even if they have to call me at night or on Saturdays and Sundays."

For Granados, it is obvious that customer service is top priority at Farmacia Divina Gracia by merely watching how the store attendants serve its customers, and that his hands-on management style is at play. "You have to be there to know what's going on in your business, and also to know what to do next. Focus and be there," he says.

Businesses you can start from P26,000 to P50,000

Got more money than P25,000 and wanted to put up a small business using that money? Well, Entrepreneur magazine official website is very generous enough to share this article: Part 2 of businesses you can start from P1k to P100k I enjoyed reading it and I hope you will enjoy it as well.  


Read this article too, you may find it helpful: http://smallbusinessphilippines.blogspot.com/2012/02/small-business-idea-10000-to-30000.html

P26,000 TO P50,000

Beauty Salon

http://www.flickr.com/photos/70285332@N00/

Footwear

http://www.flickr.com/photos/18161271@N00/

Creative Designs

http://www.flickr.com/photos/47264866@N00/

 Joby Linsangan-Moreno was supposed to study to become a doctor after graduating as a medical technologist. Oliver Rempillo was working in a government agency as an exhibitions designer and organizer but thought of setting his sights elsewhere. And Corazon "Baby" Coligado, a registered nurse, couldn't land the job she wanted abroad.

The three then decided to take different paths to career success. With a little capital and a lot of effort, they have become successful entrepreneurs--proof that you don't need more than P50,000 to get started in business.

But each had a different reason for going into it.

"At that time, I wanted to do something different, something exciting and liberating," says Linsangan-Moreno, who, instead of pursuing a medical degree on top of her medical technology education, put up Orange Blush Salon in June 2003 in her native Cabanatuan City.

The licensed medical technologist, who went into the salon business with just P30,000, recalls: "I come from a family of professionals, and my friends were either employed or were planning to go work abroad. None of them, except my boyfriend [Lawrence Moreno] who's now my husband, considered going into business."
Linsangan-Moreno has since grown her salon to seven branches: six in Cabanatuan and its surrounding towns in Nueva Ecija, and another in Sta. Rosa in Laguna.

In the case of Rempillo, he decided to start a business along the same lines as his job of designing and organizing booths for exhibitions with CITEM (Center for International Trade Expositions and Missions), an agency under the Department of Trade and Industry.

"Basically, I set up En Theos Creative because it's what I'd been doing all along," he says of the business he and his wife Mira founded in September 2007, also with just P30,000. "It's been ingrained in me since 1999, so I stayed in the design field."

Rempillo says he saw an emerging market for the services of exhibitions companies after learning of the construction of SMX, a major exhibition hall beside the SM Mall of Asia in Pasay City.
For a long time, he says, companies only had the Philippine Trade Training Center (PTTC), the World Trade Center (WTC), and the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC) as major venues for exhibits. "In the mid-'90s, SM built the Megatrade Hall [at the SM Megamall in Mandaluyong City] but it used to only host small shows," he says.

For Coligado, the route to entrepreneurship took her away from her nursing career. She was working as a nurse at the Laguna Provincial Hospital when something happened in 2006 that prompted her to find a better-paying job in the United States--her husband Ferdinand, a seaman, stopped working after undergoing a gall-bladder operation. She was then only earning P13,000 a month as a government nurse, which was not enough to support a family of four. "But I wasn't lucky enough to get work abroad," she says.

At this point, a friend of Coligado suggested that she might as well go into the business that their town of Liliw, Laguna, had long been noted for: handmade slippers and shoes. She heeded the advice and, with an initial capital of P50,000 from her husband's previous earnings overseas, put up Ai-She Footwear in March 2006 (the company's name is a composite of the first syllables of the names of their daughters Aira and Shelly).

Since then, the company has been making abaca-lined shoes and slippers, distributing them to department stores in Manila and to retail outlets in Southern Luzon.

Savings to earnings

One thing in common among Linsangan-Moreno, Rempillo, and Coligado is that they started a business using only their personal or family savings.

Linsangan-Moreno says she built her P30,000 capital by setting aside part of her salary as both medical technologist and instructor at the Good Samaritan Hospital and Colleges in Cabanatuan.

"Before I went into business, I figured out that I was quite OK with managing finances and budgeting," she says. "I first considered franchising a known salon but didn't have the money for it, so I decided to put up my own."

Rempillo likewise started En Theos Creative with only about P30,000 in initial capital, using the funds to buy a personal computer for doing his design work. "The money I needed wasn't big enough for me to get a loan from a bank," he explains.

For Coligado, her husband Ferdinand's monthly income of P60,000 as a seaman had enabled her to save enough money to get her footwear business started. Although she had set the funds aside not for business but simply as reserve, it came handy when Ferdinand had to quit his job due to illness. "Although he was earning that much at the time, we realized that he couldn't go on working on ships for life," she says.

Another thing in common among the three entrepreneurs is that they all believed in plowing back--and did consistently plow back--their profits back into the business to make it grow. None of them needed to put in additional investments from other sources afterwards.
Recalls Linsangan-Moreno: "After establishing the name and clientele of our first Orange Blush salon, I put up our second branch eight months later using the revenues that the salon had made. Then I funded the putting up of all our other branches in the same way." 

On top of this, she pursued a no-borrowing philosophy for growing the salons, putting more of her own money into them as needed. "The more the salons, the bigger the investment. There's definitely a need to increase your investment in your business as it grows. To keep up with the other salons and provide excellent service, you'll always need to provide funds for marketing, research and development, and for renovation and continuous innovation."

In Rempillo's case, being in a service industry requires him to put in more funds into the business only when he needs to hire freelancers for support when handling big projects. He explains: "In the past year and a half, we haven't acquired more equipment or materials to the business. We're cheap in the sense that we're not producing a product."

As to Coligado, just to be on the safe side, she decided to hang on to her nursing job at the provincial hospital until January 2008. That was when the business finally began receiving orders for export. "I realized then that I had to fully commit myself, my time, and my effort into our business," she explains.

Rough, smooth starts

Unlike Rempillo and Coligado, Linsangan-Moreno had a rough start with her business. "The first six months of the business was a most trying time for me," she says. "This was because I was only starting to learn how to run the business, how to handle people, how to keep customers, and how to keep the cash flowing into the business."

She had bought her first salon from a friend who couldn't sustain its operational costs, so she admits that she did not know much about the business at the start. She compensated for this by taking a crash course in cosmetology and by attending seminars to learn all she could about how to run a salon.

Six months after opening Orange Blush, however, all of her hairstylists were pirated by another salon, leaving Linsangan-Moreno no choice but to find younger stylists willing to be trained. She then had them undergo all the necessary training to do professional hairstyling work. At the same time, she got busy promoting her salon, establishing joint-activity tie-ups with schools in Cabanatuan and sponsoring concerts to draw in her targeted clientele--the youth.

All of these moves paid off for Linsangan-Moreno. Two months after her original staff left Orange Blush, she was able to save enough money to open a second salon in Cabanatuan. From then on, the business became stable and profitable enough, allowing her to quit her job as a medical technologist and to run Orange Blush as a full-time entrepreneur.

In contrast to the rough start of Linsangan-Moreno's salon, the first six months of En Theos in its design business were, according to Rempillo, "very, very good. Clients were coming in left and right, to the point that I had to turn down some of them because I couldn't handle their projects anymore."

He recalls that during that time, his wife Mira, herself a graphic artist, also went into business. She joined the public relations firm BrandSpeak Asia as its co-owner, vice president, and creative director; BrandSpeak Asia, run by two of her friends, used to be a client of En Theos.

Rempillo says that Mira's move slowed En Theos somewhat because she had taken her creative jobs and clients in En Theos to BrandSpeak Asia, but that it was also a plus because they gained a stake in the PR firm. "It also allowed En Theos to focus on exhibits, showroom design, and store design," he explains.

In the case of the Coligados, they were able to recover their initial investment in Ai-She Footwear as early as by its sixth month in business. Ai-She had quickly developed a sizable clientele, resulting in brisk sales. Today, the company sells over P100,000 worth of shoes and slippers weekly and employs 18 workers in a factory just a few steps away from the Coligado residence in Liliw.

Expansion, future plans

Growth is very much in the horizon for all the three entrepreneurs. Linsangan-Moreno says that Orange Blush Salon began franchising this year, and proudly reports that it opened its first franchised branch just last April at Daan Sarile in Cabanatuan. Her husband Lawrence, a certified public accountant and owner of several rice retail stores in Nueva Ecija, had helped her draft Orange Blush's franchise agreement; she married him in February 2008 or five years after she put up Orange Blush.

En Theos Creative, less than two years after going into business, is even more ambitious: it now intends to incorporate the sole proprietorship. Rempillo says he is now on the lookout for an architect, an interior designer, and experts in business development and finance to round out the minimum five incorporators needed to set up a company.

He says: "It's going to be a pay cut of sorts for me, but if my business group brings in more clients, and if I have two more people who can do the technical aspects of exhibit-booth or store designing, then I'd see a sudden expansion of our business."

On the other hand, Coligado continues to expand the distribution network of Ai-She Footwear. These days, she has also been making more and more frequent trips to Metro Manila, specifically Marikina, to get supplies for her footwear factory.

"My hands are full running our business, but with my husband's help, of course," she says. "We have to do this because it's still our only source of livelihood, and our workers also depend on it."

Most important moves

>Joby Linsangan-Moreno considers her having taken control of her first Orange Blush Salon and staying on top of it as the most important decision she has made in her business. While learning all she could about how a salon should be run, she had allowed a friend--the salon's previous owner--to continue running the salon.

She explains: "For me, setting your goals, realizing them, and staying focused is what will keep you in the business. No one should know more about your business than you do. When people see that you know what you want and where you are going, they will believe and trust you and your company."

>For En Theos Creative, on the other hand, what made the big difference was Oliver Rempillo's decision to operate it home-based. "You don't have to pay rent for an expensive office space in, say, Makati, and it helps keep your costs low," he says, adding that he makes it a point to meet clients at coffee shops and restaurants that he can conveniently commute to.

He says he gets a continuing flow of job orders from his network of regular clients, among them Dealo Koffee Klatsch, the popular bakery and coffee shop based in Lucban, Quezon; clients referred to him by his former colleagues at CITEM; and friends like Tony Gonzales, with whom he does subcontracting work for the European Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines (ECCP).

>As to Corazon Coligado, she attributes the expansion of her footwear business to her decision to give samples of Ai-She Footwear's newest and trendy creations to stores outside of Liliw in Laguna, and even to convenience stores in gas service stations along South Superhighway. This approach to the business rather than just doing it in a fixed location was of great help in attracting more clients and more retail outlets for her products, she says.

Read this article too, you may find it helpful: http://smallbusinessphilippines.blogspot.com/2012/02/small-business-idea-10000-to-30000.html

Businesses you can start from P10,000 to P25,000

Small business enthusiasts, here is another article for you.

In the previous post, I mentioned businesses that you can start in less than P10,000. Now, I will be giving you these businesses you can start from P10,000 to P15,000. I found this article based on the article posted in Entrepreneur magazine official website: Businesses you can start from P1k to P100k (Part 1)


Read this article too, you may find it helpful: http://smallbusinessphilippines.blogspot.com/2012/02/small-business-idea-10000-to-30000.html

P11,000 TO 25,000

T-shirts

 http://www.flickr.com/photos/51035767928@N01/

Specialty Sauces

http://www.flickr.com/photos/35034361412@N01/

Bags and Cases

http://www.flickr.com/photos/23912576@N05/

The impetus for becoming an entrepreneur is not always a compelling drive and immediate need to make money. Indeed, for these five entrepreneurs who made good on an initial capital of only P25,000 or less, the reasons for going into business varied from fulfilling a class requirement, filling a personal need for a particular product, and simply taking the cue from one's innate business sense.

Darkuscase founders and artists Ace del Mundo and Lui Cornelio both loved bags, and so they were disappointed when they couldn?t find in the market suitable and acceptable gig bags for musical instruments. The two had in mind soft, colorful, and hip cases to go better with their artistic inclinations, but what were available then were only the typical hard, bulky, and unattractive cases.

This prompted del Mundo, guitarist of the pop-rock band Kenyo, to make designs for his own bags. Since he hails from Bulacan, which is considered the country's bag-making capital, he didn't find it hard to find people to execute his designs. Thus, in September 2006, he and Cornelio put up Darkuscase, with him as chief designer and in charge of production and with Cornelio in charge of marketing.

"It was more than just money," says Cornelio. "When you come up with an idea for a product and really believe in its worth, you just have to make things happen using whatever resources you have at the moment."

The name Darkuscase had a simple enough origin. Cornelio explains: "Darkus is Ace's name-handle on the Net, a name he came across in a comic book while still in college. Since he was known to friends online as Darkus, it made sense for us to carry the name. We felt it sounded unique and cool and had the potential for great brand-name recall."

Initially investing P15,000 of their own money in the business, they bought bag-making materials and second-hand equipment to get started. Sales of their products was brisk, so they recovered their investment in as little as three months. Today, from having only one subcontractor at the start, they now have three to cope with the increasing orders for their bags.

After almost three years in operation, Darkuscase is still in its growth phase. It doesn't have a physical store for its products as yet, but its online store, www.darkuscase.com, has been doing good business. 

Aside from bags for musical instruments, it now also sells guitar and camera straps; guitar picks; pedal cases; messenger, belt and travel bags; and so-called flag bags (messenger bags with flaps decorated boldly with a country's flag). The initial buyers of these products came from the partners' immediate circle of friends, but now anybody can order them through their online store.

Darkuscase is taking its business slowly but surely. "The first few months, we had the usual hits and misses since we both had no business background to back us up," says Cornelio. "We then received valuable inputs from our first wave of clients, and that helped us a lot especially in the production process for our bags."

All bags that Darkuscase makes are made-to-order and customized according to the size of the musical instrument. It takes 10 to 34 days for an order to be filled, depending on the quantity of the order.

Explains Cornelio: "Every order we receive goes through a unique production process because every client has his or her own unique set of requirements. Early on in the business, we were already aware of this challenge so we focused on working closely with different groups or communities of sewers and material suppliers for our bags. After our first year, each group now has its own skills and resources to manufacture particular bag lines for us."

Spoofs Limited Inc., maker of the highly popular t-shirts with tongue-in-cheek and in-your-face lines, is another niche player that started its business on very limited capital. Some of the phrases used in its shirts border on copyright infringement and on the vulgar, but the company's 17 years of existence is proof that there is a substantial market for offbeat products.

Charlie Dobles and Drew Marcelo came up with the idea for Spoofs Limited as part of the requirements of their Ateneo de Manila class in entrepreneurial management. 

Together with four other classmates, the two raised P18,000 to jumpstart a business with real-world potential. Then, within the prescribed 21 days of selling for products proposed in their class, they sold at various school venues t-shirts emblazoned with spoofs of popular clothing labels, among them Bolo (Tagalog for machete, and a take on the Polo brand), United Couples of Banatan (a take on the Benetton brand), and Timberlang labels (a take on the Timberland brand).

"The best way to test your market is to sell to actual customers," says Dobles, and they did just that. At the end of the selling period, they sold 1,200 units and their project garnered for them a grade of 'A.'

After college, in 1992, Dobles and Marce lo decided to pursue the business in earnest, producing up to 30,000 t-shirts initially. But there was one major roadblock to their enterprise: clothing retailers refused to carry their t-shirts because of the provocative and legally questionable lines printed on them.

This was highly problematic to the partners because in those years when online marketing was still alien territory, you had to have shelf space in the shopping centers if you wanted to sell anything. Indeed, it was only when an unlikely retailer, Gift Gate (licensee of Hello Kitty products), agreed to carry the Spoofs Limited products that other retailers relented and started carrying the products as well.

Today, Spoofs Limited now has expanded to almost 30 outlets, seven t-shirt lines, and two support companies.

"By starting small, I was able to build an identity for my product," says Tina Vitas, owner of the Sarsarap line of bottled Filipino-style food sauces.

Vitas started Sarsarap in April 2008 on a budget of about P20,000 of her personal money. The Vitas family has a restaurant called Mama V in Malate, Manila, and her mother, Tita, would make special sauces for the dishes served at the restaurant. Among these sauces were chili cheese, sweet mustard, chili vinegar, and siling labuyo (hot chili). Vitas saw the potential of those sauces for reaching a larger market if sold on their own.

She then started to develop her mother's sauces, testing the market for them by at first joining small bazaars and later the big food expositions. "Majority of what I spent initially was for the rent of the booths at the bazaars and food expos, which wasn't cheap," Vitas says. In less than half a year, she was able to recover her initial investment.

Vitas, who describes herself as someone "who thinks 40, looks 30, and feels 20," had spent the first year of her business feeling the market's reaction to Sarsarap. She explains: "I didn't really want to venture into growth until my production volumes were already in place. I'm just beginning, a year later, to go into expansion mode."

Her one year of market testing led Vitas to repackage, rebrand and relaunch her products, a process that she says required her to put in more working capital into the business. By the third quarter of 2009, she intends to launch still another brand, one that she says is "new and improved, but with the same taste that our customers have grown to love."

Starting small and on a tight budget gives the entrepreneur the advantage of pursuing an idea without the worry of losing millions in investments, and as these five entrepreneurs have discovered, doing so with pluck and persistence has a better than good chance of being rewarded with success.

KEYS TO BUSINESS SUCCESS

• Tina Vitas of Sarsarap: "Aggressive guerilla marketing, hands-on sales and customer service, and empowerment training of our sales team. These really spelled the difference for our brand despite limited distribution."

Lui Cornelio of Darkuscase: "Joining music festivals and music-centric events, and making our products accessible to the market via the Internet. Overall, however, it boils down to the tried-and-tested formula of sipag at tiyaga [industriousness and patience].?"


Read this article too, you may find it helpful: http://smallbusinessphilippines.blogspot.com/2012/02/small-business-idea-10000-to-30000.html

Businesses you can start less than P10,000

For business in the Philippines using small capital, click here: http://smallcapitalbusinessphilippines.com/

Putting up a small business is a challenging thing to do. It requires patience doing the research about your market, your product and your marketing method. 

But we cannot deny that putting up small business requires capital, funds, or simply we call it MONEY. We may have the ability to be patient in doing everything but we do not have the resources when it comes to raising funds to get our small business started. 


Read this article too, you may find it helpful: http://smallbusinessphilippines.blogspot.com/2012/02/small-business-idea-10000-to-30000.html

http://www.flickr.com/photos/43529122@N08/

I researched some more and found an article in the Entrepreneur magazine official website which gives you an idea on businesses that you can put up that requires small capital. The title of the article Businesses you can start from P1k to P100k (Part 1)  

ENJOY READING!!

Yes, there are business you can start from P1,000 to P100,000!

For less than P10,000, one can start a spiced-ham or bottled-food business, a t-shirt company can get off the ground with under P25,000 in capital, about P50,000 should be enough to get a shoe factory up and running, and one can start a travel and tours agency for just P100,000.

No matter what business the aspiring entrepreneur has in mind, it's been proven that a little cash can go a long way, and most Filipino business owners know this by heart. 

Indeed, according to the latest statistics from the Department of Trade and Industry, 97 percent of all registered businesses in the country are micro enterprises, or those with under P3 million in assets. And this obviously doesn't take into account the thousands of other businesses in the "underground economy"--those that operate without government licenses and don't pay taxes on their incomes.

Most of these "micro-biz" doubtless had started with an initial capital way below P3 million, which is a princely sum particularly in these tough times. Of course, these funds for business startups can come from anywhere, but the most common sources are personal savings, pensions, loans from banks or pawnshops, and cash gifts from relatives and friends. 

How to raise startup capital can be a challenge in itself, but the much greater challenge to the would-be entrepreneur is how to parlay these resources into a viable and profitable enterprise.

As demonstrated by the men and women whose stories appear in the succeeding pages, these dream businesses can become a reality even with an initial capital of just P100,000 or less. And the opportunities are to be found in areas as diverse as home-service massage, bag-making, creative work for exhibits, and food-cart franchises, to name just a few. 

The only limits to the prospective entrepreneur's choices are his or her passion for the business and the available startup funds. And, of course, there's an advantage in starting small, for it allows the entrepreneur to learn the ropes of the business with minimal risk before going into costlier ventures in the future.

So, whether you only have P5,000 as a graduation gift from your parents or as much as P95,000 saved from your days of working from 9:00 to 5:00, now is the best time to explore your entrepreneurial options. You can become an entrepreneur no matter what stage or station of life you are in. Just let these stories help guide you on your way. 

P10,000 AND BELOW

Thai Massage

http://www.flickr.com/photos/51035727839@N01/

                                             
Meat Processing

http://www.flickr.com/photos/77979959@N00/

Gift-Wrapping

http://www.flickr.com/photos/84345058@N00/

A lot of people want to put up a business of their own but are deterred by the thought that it would need a huge investment. Well, they are wrong. There are so many businesses that could be started with P10,000 or less, like the gift-wrapping service, home-service spa and massage, meat processing venture, and eatery that were put up by the seven entrepreneurs we are featuring in this story.

In fact, Chiqui Barretto got started with her first Wrap It Up! gift-wrapping shop in Calamba, Laguna, in 2000 by simply spending on transportation to Divisoria to get her initial supplies. Preeyada Saengpradab and her husband Roland Saenz de Tejada opened Preeyada's Real Thai Massage in 2008 in Bacoor, Cavite, with only two dozens of towels they had purchased from Divisoria. 

Ruby Sauza-Limbaña and sister Roselita Sauza invested only P200 in 1983 to start Rosa Foods, their Kalibo, Aklan-based meat processing business. And Mary Maranan and husband Aristeo put up only P450 in 1980 to start a small restaurant, Mary's Eatery, in San Fernando, La Union.

How each of these three entrepreneurs grew their business from such humble beginnings offers valuable lessons in real-life entrepreneurship.

FATEFUL BEGINNINGS

In the case of the Maranan couple, the P450 they used to start an eatery in San Fernando, La Union, 29 years ago was actually money they had borrowed from a friend. They were in such dire straits at the time after sustaining heavy losses as biyaheros or traveling buy-and-sell agents.

Maranan recalls: "We really had a hard time as biyaheros, peddling our wares in a bamboo tray all over the town. We would do it the whole day under the heat of the sun--a very exhausting task that gave us no assurance at all of selling anything."

Indeed, the biyahero couple went bankrupt before long, so they decided to venture into what they thought was a more reliable business. They saw a captive market of jeepney drivers from a nearby terminal and put up their eatery beside it. This was how they got Mary's Eatery started, and the business did well during its first year. It served the usual carinderia fare in the morning, and beer and grilled street foods like "adidas" (chicken feet) in the evening.

The Sauza sisters went into the processed meat business in Kalibo, Aklan, to augment the family's income. In 1983, while on vacation in their hometown, Roselita had asked her sister Ruby to think of a sideline business so they could stretch her vacation money. Roselita was working at the time as a government employee at the Region IV office of the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) in Manila.

Both of them knew how to make longanisa, so the sisters decided to use P200 of Roselita's money to buy 5 kg of meat and the needed spices. They then started making longanisa and Ruby sold it to the various government offices in town. Roselita returned to Manila to get back to work after two weeks, but Ruby continued the business because of the growing demand for their product.

In the case of Chiqui Barretto, she went into the gift-wrapping business without really intending to. She had a desktop printing shop at Waltermart in Calamba, Laguna, a franchised business called Personalized Greeting that she has been running since 1998. Her shop is right beside the Abenson appliance store, and it just so happened that customers buying appliances for gift-giving got into the habit of buying rolled gift-wrapping paper from Barretto's shop.

In time the Abenson customers started asking Barretto to gift-wrap their appliances as well. Although it was not her shop's line of business, Barretto would agree to personally wrap the appliances so as not to disappoint the people asking for the service. The volume of the gift-wrapping orders then grew to a point that Barretto decided to make gift-wrapping a regular business.

In November 2000, she asked the Waltermart management for permission to offer gift-wrapping as a regular service. She explained that Christmas was already approaching and there was no shop offering the service anyway. Waltermart approved her request and allowed her to set up a gift-wrapping table for 35 days at a very reasonable rental rate.

Recalls Barretto: "I started this with only my credibility as capital. I got the materials I needed on a 30-day term from local suppliers. The table I used was remodeled scrap from my cousin's shop, for which I later paid P8,500."

The business, which she initially called the Gift Wrap Company, did so well that she was able to pay the suppliers and the rental even before the due dates.

Preeyada and her husband Roland, who are used to getting a massage every week, got into the Thai massage business because they could not get the real Thai massage from the local parlors. "I was very disappointed with the Thai massage that we were getting," she recalls. "I'm a Thai and I love Thai massage, so I know what a real Thai massage is." 

At that time Preeyada was commuting from Barangay Molino in Bacoor, Cavite, to Makati City where she worked with a golf-tour and travel company. She found all that traveling so tiring so she decided she might as well put up a business of her own offering real Thai massage. 

Not having enough capital to put up a massage parlor, though, she started with a home spa/massage service in 2008. She would call potential clients using her personal mobile phone, and her husband Roland would provide her with flyers to be distributed to the nearby villages. She has since trained six people as therapists to help her handle her growing clientele.  

EXPANDING THE VENTURES

For these seven entrepreneurs, growing their respective businesses has not been easy considering that they were all started with small capitalizations.

At least in the case of Barretto, however, she was able to expand her Gift Wrap Company by just plowing back its profits into the business. In 2002, after putting up an improved storefront for her original Calamba gift-wrapping outlet, she put up another branch at Sta. Rosa, Laguna, and registered the business under a new name, Wrap it Up! The company now has 11 branches and will be opening three more this year.

"I was able to put up one branch after another from the profits of every branch," she says. "I eventually opened the business for franchising, improved each of the stores and their merchandising, and trained my employees using the profits generated by the business."

In the case of the Sauza sisters, they recovered their initial investment in Rosa Foods in less than a month. They were able to increase weekly production from 5 kg to 10 kg, then to 15kg and on to 20 kg because a meat supplier had agreed to give them a daily credit term--too short actually, but still a great help to the fledgling Rosa Foods. 

Later, the Sauza sisters chipped in money to buy a meat grinder. This enabled them to increase their daily production to 100 kg by the end of their first year in the business. 

After paying back the P450 they owed from their friend, the Maranan couple decided to expand and move their eatery to make it bigger. Every now and then they borrowed small sums of money from their friends to finance their expansion. 

Even as the business grew, however, the couple maintained their strategy of catering primarily to the masses. In 2002, after further renovating and expanding it as well as improving its menu, they changed the name of the eatery from Mary's Eatery to R&M Canteen, Catering & Videoke.

In 1994, the Maranan couple diversified by opening City Image Salon, which offers hair and makeup services as well as gown rentals. They will soon be also opening a resort with 20 cottages at Cabaraoan in San Fernando City, La Union.

As to Preeyada and her husband Roland, they were able to eventually put up a shop of their own, Preeyada's Real Thai Massage Center, in August 2008 despite not having enough capital. 

What Preeyada did was to save the profits from their home-massage service to fund the establishment of the center, and to negotiate as a low a rent as possible from the owner of the shop space. To further economize, the couple used the furniture in their house to furnish the center and asked Preeyada's friends and family members from Thailand to bring oils, ointments, and herbs to the center in exchange for getting a massage.

Preeyada used the business's profit to buy more equipment, furniture, oil containers, service boxes, beds, and beddings. After six months, the couple was able to open another branch in Tagaytay City, again furnishing the new center with some used equipment and furniture from their first branch. "To expand, we would literally reuse our resources," Roland says, "What we don't need, we don't buy; what we could save, we save." 

In the case of Rosa Foods, it now has a separate HACCP-accredited factory that produces 300 kg of processed meat daily. It has consistently pursued a strategy of not stocking up on inventory, producing only according to the demand. This has made the business more cost-efficient, and with its inventories always moving very fast, there is very little wastage or none at all.

Rosa Foods currently supplies various outlets in Western Visayas and in Manila. It now also has a store in Boracay and a warehouse-outlet in Iloilo to cater to their Bacolod and Iloilo customers.  

What these seven entrepreneurs have proven is that it is entirely possible to grow a business from scratch--literally with only P10,000 or even much less. And what they have done, any entrepreneur worth his or her salt certainly can do, too.

ROAD TO SUCCESS

For Chiqui Barretto of Wrap It Up!, the key to success in business is having a good grasp of the customers' motivation, behavior, and taste and being able to communicate it to the employees. 

She calls her employees "wrap artists" and expects them to know precisely why they are in the business. She explains: "We make every gift a masterpiece. No matter how simple the gift is, it must always exude the 'specialness' of the recipient."

Barretto adds that you also need to cultivate good relationships with your suppliers. This way, she says, they will be willing to help you in any way they can when you want to expand your business.

For Mary Maranan of R&M Canteen, success was made possible by her having the courage to pursue the business despite the difficulties and by making every effort to keep the trust of her suppliers and creditors.

Her advice to would-be entrepreneurs: "To earn the trust of your creditors, make it a point to pay whatever you borrowed from them."

For Preeyada and Roland of Preeyada's Real Thai Massage, success was the result of investing in the training of their therapists and of incorporating the Thai culture in their services. 

Preeyada explains: "Our business is healing. Thai massage is not just a simple massage but is all about healing; it's a combination of reflex and yoga. So we make our therapists study the Thai culture and its connection with the massage. They must understand that they're not just offering a service but are actually healing their clients."

For Roselita Sauza of Rosa Foods, success came largely from her decision to go full-time in the business to better manage it. By doing so, she says, she and her sister Ruby were able to standardize the system of the whole business, including accounting, inventory, and production. This enabled the company to expand and capture a larger market.

Read this article too, you may find it helpful: http://smallbusinessphilippines.blogspot.com/2012/02/small-business-idea-10000-to-30000.html

10 Ways to Get Business Capital from the Bank

BUSINESS CAPITAL is a very important factor in putting up a small business. You will need business capital no matter what happens when you are planning to become a small business owner.

In the previous post, the four ways how to raise funds was discussed. The last one mentioned was business loan. But how will you get a business loan? Why do most of the people who wanted to become small business owners were disapproved when they applied for a business loan? 

 http://www.flickr.com/photos/22177648@N06/

Personally, I haven't tried applying for a business loan yet. Why? Because I wanted to follow the steps mentioned in the article I found in the official website of Entrepreneur Magazine: 10 Ways to get business capital from the bank.

I wanted to share to all of you this article as this would be helpful to you at least by being prepared before applying for a business loan. Enjoy reading :)

One of the greatest problems that entrepreneurs encounter is the lack of funding. 

While most would use their savings or sell some assets to help finance their business, as a business grows, business expenses often outstrip the entrepreneur’s ability to independently finance them. It is often necessary for entrepreneurs to borrow from lenders such as banks to finance or expand their business.

However, given the economic downturn, most lenders are now more reluctant to lend, especially to startup businesses that don’t have prior credit records with them. Even if they do get them, startups are more often than not given loans at very high interest rates.

But according to Henry Go, a management and finance consultant with HiSYNG Business and Financial Consultancy, most entrepreneurs can avail of loans with good terms, provided they can impress their lenders. 

Here are 10 tips Go says will help impress lending institutions.

1. Know your business

This will immediately give comfort to the lender, for they will know that they are dealing with a serious borrower.


2. Be ready to submit

Thoroughly prepared documents as may be required by lender, for they will know that they are dealing with a serious borrower. 

3. Consult a reputable financial advisor or consultant here

A consultant can usually provide the necessary inputs for putting up a credible business plan and come up with the number that best suits your requirements.

4. Do your research

If you decide to go through the borrowing process without a consultant, then scout around to find out which loan options and which banks best suit your needs. 

5. Plan ahead

Anticipate the questions a lender may pose and have honest, well-researched answers ready. Decisions to lend are fact-based – don’t be idealistic when answering questions and providing projections.

Lenders will appreciate your practical perspective. It is also wise to organize all your documents prior to the meeting with the bank, for easy access to specific items when requested, and to show you meticulous attention to details. 

6. Show sincerity

Given the tight credit market, managing risk is increasingly important for lenders. With this in mind, consider providing ample collateral toward your venture if possible. Your willingness to invest in your business – and in your success – reflects your own confidence in your plan. 

7. Preparation before meeting with your lender is key

The time and commitment you dedicate in advance may help increase your appeal as a solid loan candidate in this competitive market.

8. Treat your lender as a business partner

You need to disclose everything about your company to your potential lender. Full disclosure about your financial position is essential in building an excellent reputation with the lender.

Giving a full disclosure also means not exaggerating the truth. It’s never a good idea to mislead the lender by making unfounded positive comments about the future.

 9. Impress with a good reputation

Maintaining a good reputation is one of the best ways to impress a lender.

10. Remain loyal

Stay loyal to your lender. Keep giving them business and good projects and good deals. In other words, you can improve your relationship with lenders by also bringing them business.