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[av_heading heading=’PEOPLE POWWOW | Learning from a businessman named Pedro’ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=”]
BY HERBERT VEGO
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Tuesday, April 4, 2017
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THE first and only time I met the man surnamed Pedro was fleeting. It was when he delivered an inspirational speech, “Breaking through Barriers,” during a business forum in Iloilo City. What he said there has found an eternal niche in his audience’s consciousness.
This corner refers to Dr. Cecilio Kwok Pedro – president and chief executive officer of Lamoiyan Corporation — whose faith in his God-given ability to surmount every obstacle has led him to the peak of Mt. Success.
He began his speech unusually asking us to stand around round tables and turn right.
“Massage the back of the person in front of you,” he said.
We did for a few seconds.
“Turn around and massage the person who had massaged you.”
We did, wondering what it was all about.
“You,” the speaker thundered, an index finger pointing at us. “You have just obeyed the golden rule: ‘Do unto others what you would have others do unto you.’”
The golden rule, he stressed, had always been among his favorite quotes. He also mentioned many more, including that of the late United States President John F. Kennedy: “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”
Pedro cited the initials “CSR” as the keys that have opened to him doors to opportunities. Yes, it was “corporate social responsibility,” but based on his experience C could also mean “change”; S, “sacrifice”; and R, “rewards.”
He quoted the late American preacher Henry Ward Beecher: “In this world, it is not what we take up but what we give up that makes us rich.”
As regards the “rewards,” Pedro enthused they could just present themselves sooner or later “if we see the world for what it can be.”
‘CSR” was the guideline he presented himself with in 1986 when a dark future seemed to be hovering over the business he had nurtured since 1977 – the Aluminum Container Inc., which was making aluminum tubes for two multinational toothpaste manufacturers, Colgate-Palmolive and Unilever. The almost simultaneous decision of these customers to sever business with him was so sudden that he had no alternative but close shop.
“They were shifting to cheaper plastic tubes,” he revealed.
Realizing that no other toothpaste company would patronize his aluminum-molding machine, Pedro decided to take an indefinite rest, hoping to bounce back at first opportunity.
“Giving up was not an option,” he said.
As an elder of the United Evangelical Churches of the Philippines, he wanted to prove by example the adage, “God helps those who help themselves.”
Two years later, the opportunity presented itself. His family had decided to revive his machinery by launching the toothpaste firm, Lamoiyan Corporation, against all odds. The product would be branded Hapee.
The challenging question was: How could he snatch a share of the market at that time when his former customers were enjoying 99 percent of the pie? Certainly he could not compete in promotion and distribution aspects.
The answer: Match the quality of the old brands; but cut price by 50 percent!
Quality he achieved by hiring the deaf-mute and the hearing impaired that now make up 70 percent of his workforce.
“They work better,” he quipped.“Walang tsismis.”
The 64-year old businessman explained why he was so selfless, “I will not bring a single centavo when I leave this world. I want to be remembered for what I did.”
Dr. Cecilio K. Pedro – a Business Management graduate of Ateneo de Manila University (1975) – self-deprecated, “I barely passed with a grade of 2.2.”
By then, however, he had long ago learned his first business lesson.
“While in grade 2,” he quipped, “I sold ball pens to my classmates. If they had no money, I told them to pay when able. Some of them did not pay. I lost the business but gained the lesson that a sale is not a sale unless paid for.” (hvego@yahoo.com/PN)
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