Guess I’m on a real business trip lately. That’s OK, many of you who read this blog are too. This morning I had to evacuate my home … my wife got on a cleaning kick and said she couldn’t work with me around so I should make myself scarce … so I did what any red-blooded faux Filipino would do, I headed to the mall.
Everyone always thinks Internet cafe (computer shop) when they think about business in the Philippines it seems. In our local mall there are two ‘real’ Internet cafes, franchisees of the Netopia chain. (on the 2km drive to the mall I pass at least 10 other Internet cafe’s that I know of, the closest one is less than 100 meters from my house). They both do business but I have seen the hourly rate go from P60 per hour to P20 per hour in the slightly over two years we have lived here. This doesn’t lead me to believe they are making any huge profits. In walking around the mall I noticed that a huge mezzanine area on the second floor had been take over by yet a third Internet business … just tables and workstations out on the mall floor, specializing in high speed games access only … and at 10:30 in the morning there were already 5 or 6 “gamesters” with their noses glued to the screen and their fingers flying on controller buttons. So it seems the bottom has not yet dropped out of the business.
I also had been meaning to get some business cards (calling cards) for PhilFAQS that I can hand out when I interview people. There’s a little kiosk in the main mall hall. It’s been there for more than three years … exactly the kind of low-overhead business that would interest me. Aside from the investment in glass showcases they have only a computer and a couple color printers and a scanner. The big part of their business is making personalized party invitations, gift cards and even buttons to pin on your shirt with loved one’s pictures. They do a lot of calling cards as well … not fancy print work like you get in a ‘real’ print shop but at P3 a card while you wait who is going to argue? GRAPHIC WORKS DESKTOP PUBLISHING is their name and I find they have stores in dozens of malls. If you go to the one in Marilao, just look for Charlene, tell her you’re a friend of the kalbo kano who asks all the questions and she’ll take good care of you.
But don’t look for them on the Internet. Even their business license is online, and some employee’s have their own web sites, management haven’t yet seen how much additional business they could do with even a simple website.
In that same mall is a very nice dental clinic, modern, clean, top quality dentists, bright, snappy signage and advertising, good prices and very convenient hours. Know what that dentist ain’t got? A simple web site … you can see a good example of one Philippine dentist who lives in this century here … not even the most simplistic little ‘brochure’ site that lists their ph=one numbers, hours of operation and such. Their business license is on line, but their business isn’t! .
Personally, I smell opportunity.
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Hi Philly, one thing about that graphics business though…. there is one part of it that almost certainly is not low overhead…. rents in the mall are certainly not cheap!
Oh yes a good point Bob, however two things. 1., they have been ‘making their nut’ for three years now, since the mall opened and 2., I have bno iddea what the rent actually is but remeber it’s only a kiosk, a little squer of gour counters put together in the middle of the corridor, less than 2 meters square. No walls no roof. I’m sure Tiro Henry makes them pay somehting but it’s likely not astronomical. Funny you mentioned that because I was thinking after I wrote the piece that I should have dropped in the mall admin office and treid to find out a rent ballpark figure.
They would never do anything like the business they do in the mall if they were in some cheap little stall front on a side street, and even the smallest store wuld be way bigger thna they need, so I’m sure it’s worth it to them.
I talked to my dentist in the exspensive My dentistplace in the mall a while back and she said the rent at the mall is the best investment they ever made … and they have a good size area. All the dentists there were in practice before in the typical little office on the front of a house or on the second floor over a babrer shop and cheap as those arrangements were, the business in the mall more thna h\justifies the rent. In fact i laughed when she told me that, a Filipino business person _not_ complaining about costs? Apparently she learned alittle about business while she was also studying teeth