LIVELIHOOD AND SELF-SUFFICIENCY

Starting on May 29 (this coming Monday), I will have a radio program on DZXL (558 KHZ on your radio dial), the anchor station of Radio Mindanao Network (RMN). I will be on the air every day from 6:00 to 6:30 PM, together with Ferdie Baja, my partner way back in DZEC. The title of our show is “Gulong ng Kabuhayan” which tells you right away that our main theme is livelihood. Our partners in the field will be the “Rescue Rangers”, a civic action group that Ferdie and I co-founded. All my regular guests in my livelihood program in DZAR will join me in my new show, namely Felix Linsag, Dennis San Juan, Jai Om Alas, Ben Garcia, Rene Abad, Benjie Angeles, Mon Ignacio, Ben Milano, Luz Sabas and Dr. Ernie Santos.

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Broadly interpreted, the term “livelihood” has a double meaning, because it is associated with having a job and having a business. Whereas it may be possible for a single proprietor to have a “big business”, more often than not, solo entrepreneurs usually have “small businesses”, small enough for them to be considered as “self-employed”. What this means is that most of the small scale entrepreneurs are all alone by themselves (sometimes with the help of their family members) in facing the challenges of owning and running a business, unlike the big businesses that have all the manpower and the resources to survive and win in the marketplace.

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Generally speaking, it is easier for most entrepreneurs to make products than to sell them. This is of course a relative comparison that has to be qualified, because there are some products that are easier to sell than the others. Needless to say, selling in a public market is easier than selling in a city mall, in terms of packaging, pricing and merchandizing. While it could be said that any producer could sell any product in any public market, that is not the same in the case of the supermarkets, where the competition is more intense, more so in the case of packaged goods.

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What can the government do to help these small entrepreneurs? Is the government supposed to be doing anything at all, aside from making affordable credit available to them? For discussion purposes, let us proceed on the assumption that they would have access to financing; therefore their remaining problems would be manufacturing and marketing. Assuming that they would have the money to buy the equipment that they need, it still goes without saying that they would still need assistance in the form of technical advice. Is this a service that they could easily get from the government? Comparing these two remaining needs, I think that their more critical need is marketing assistance, in all its aspects.

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Each time that you are in a supermarket, look at the products, and you will notice that there are very few Filipino goods that are “complete” in terms of positioning, branding, packaging and labeling. I think that this sad situation exists, because generally speaking, they could not afford to buy the expert marketing advice that they need. In my mind, this is where the government could really help. Sad to say, the assistance that the government gives to them is usually fragmented, meaning that isolated services are available from one agency to another, but there seems to be no mechanism for the entire government structure to provide them with the complete supply chain management of the entire marketing process.

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I do not have all the answers myself, but I do have some clues about what to do. To start with, small entrepreneurs are bound by the same marketing rules as the big businessmen. What this means is that their products need to have the right positioning, branding, packaging and labeling on top of the right pricing and merchandizing. Who is going to provide these services to them? As I see it, this should be provided by both the national and local governments, an expectation that should be clarified first hand, in order to avoid finger pointing and “blame throwing”.

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Working with one entrepreneur at a time, I am going to try doing something about this problem. Towards this end, I have already talked to Tony Gatmaitan, one of this country’s top marketing experts. He has agreed to help small entrepreneurs improve their products, free of charge at that. That is good, because we could not really afford to pay Tony for his services. There are other experts who will be assisting in this project; I will report their names to you as soon as agreements with them are firmed up. If you are a marketing expert or a marketing student and would like to help out, please contact me. If your company has a marketing operation, you could also help, so please contact me also. This invitation is for big and small companies.