STORING UP STORIES OF MY STORES

Since I was younger, I have sold many different stuff to many people - from classmates, friends, officemates, neighbors, acquaintances to whoever I meet. Whatever I offered for sale were usually bought. I used to sell T-shirts, pants, shoes, bags, beauty products, canned goods, chocolates, bath and laundry soap, imported products and many more. Then in 1996, I asked my father to help me finance in putting up a small retail store for my mother who at that time had retired from the government service as public elementary school teacher. When my father agreed, a store was constructed in front of our house. I bought all the items to be sold and everytime I had an out-of-town travel, I made sure that I bring home something which the other stores in our community didn’t have. I deviated from the traditional retail stores by offering items which were not usually sold by a retail store. My mother used to get furious everytime I bring in items to our store which she thought were not saleable. Once, I brought with me a bundle of used clothing, a box of apples, picture frames, plastic wares, gift items, hair accessories, compact discs and firecrackers – I was so glad that the port security was not that strict compared now- when I came home from Cebu. When my mother saw those items, she told me that I will never be bought at all and she was afraid that I will just lose my capital. But to her surprise, I had a return of my investment in a matter of week and I had two hundred percent profit. From then on, my mother believed that I got his father’s business acumen. I became not too involved with the store operations in January 2002 when I got married and moved out of the house. My mother continued to manage the store until it closed down two years ago when my mother died. In May 2006, I opened up my own store by converting our other residential house located in a town next to the place where we live. It’s approximately 10 kilometers away from my home. Since the house is located inside a subdivision, my customers were confined to the residents of that subdivision. In December 2006, I put a plant and clay pot store with a P5000 capital. I operated it for only three months as the location of my store had very poor foot traffic and was not appropriate. When I reached the break-even in terms of return of capital, I immediately decide to close it before incurring in further loses. The experiences I got in managing small businesses are my best teachers in my dream of making bigger businesses.