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To ensure your product’s success, you need to let the public know what it’s all about. Here’s how to do it. For a business to succeed, it’s important to have a great product, but equally important is how to make the product known to its target market. Product launches can help complement a great product by generating public awareness and buzz for it.According to Majivel Marbibi, media relations director of EON, a public relations company, there are several steps to do a special product launch. She...

Since losses and pilferages are inevitable in a retail and wholesale business, entrepreneurs need to have strong and effective deterrents against them. Here are some tips to minimize this annoying problem. 1. Hot sellers are your most vulnerable goods.Items that are popular with customers are also popular with your staff. At Pilipinas Makro, we have instituted several layers of security measures as a deterrent against pilferage from within.• Key volume inventory. Identify the items that are (1)...

Many business owners and practitioners mistakenly think of selling and marketing as interchangeable concepts. This is particularly true in the case of small businesses, which often equates marketing with selling deliberately due to organizational and resource limitations.But even if sales and marketing are intrinsically linked, the fact is that they are two very different business activities.The difference. Selling begins when a product or service becomes available for consumption or use. This function...

Spotting the potential in retailing liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) is what Nelson Par, head of PR Gaz Franchising Corp., is known for. Par, together with wife Siu Ping, has been supplying equipment to major LPG refilling plants as early as 2001. Seeing how the big fuel retailers were distributing LPG products at their service stations, Par realized that LPG retail could be carried out in a far more efficient manner.  Not long after, the couple decided to invest in LPG products...

Have you ever wondered why you sometimes experience cash shortages even if your business is booming? No matter how much money your business generates, perhaps you always feel that you are always short of cash every time your suppliers are knocking on your door.The cause of the problem may be poor accounts payable management. When managing cash flows, therefore, you should remember that timing your accounts payable payments is as crucial as collecting your accounts receivables. You can manage your...

 Now, just about anyone with a parcel of land can become a supplier of coffee beans to supply the country's growing demand. One no longer needs a warehouse full of coffee beans to directly trade with the 'big guys.' More than 25 years ago, the ordinary Filipino coffee farmer would sell his produce to a middleman or to some unscrupulous coffee trader who bought the coffee beans at extremely low prices. Some coffee farmers stuck it out with coffee while a large percentage opted to shift...

In the Philippines, business matters are always best dealt with on a face-to-face basis in a warm and pleasant atmosphere. While many Western business people think that time is gold and want to get to the point immediately, the Filipino likes to be indirect, talk about mutual friends and family, exchange pleasantries, and share a joke or two. Only after establishing a cordial atmosphere will people negotiate. To a Filipino, cultivating a friend, establishing a valuable contact and developing personal...

Money is precious. As they say, it doesn’t grow on trees. But you can make it grow, even in this time of economic hardship. How? Simple. By investing wisely.There are indeed many ways to invest in today’s markets, but none is growing faster in popularity than mutual funds. Although this investment instrument has only been recently introduced in the country, mutual funds are prevalent in European, North American and even some Asian countries. But what is a mutual fund anyway?A mutual fund is a professionally-managed...

With the world going through another financial crisis, the cartoon of a chicken screaming “The sky is falling!” is in vogue again. But businessmen don’t have to act like a panicked fowl in times like this. Four entrepreneurs interviewed for this report— Brian Quebengco of the industrial design firm Inovent Inc., Dondon Atayde of the events company Wishcraft, Richard Cruz of the real-estate consulting company INSPIRE, and Jonathan Dee of Alliance Tuna International Inc.—all agree that instead of...

You may need a policy to cover your building and other structures, your furniture, inventory, equipment and supplies. You may also need a policy to insure your money and securities, records of your accounts receivable, machinery and improvements in your premises. The events causing damage to property are called “perils,” and these include lightning strikes, burglaries and vehicular accidents. There are two types of policies covering perils: a “named-perils policy” covering losses only from perils...

So you've finally decided to push through with your business idea and as luck would have it, also find funding for it. Now comes the part that every entrepreneur doesn't look forward to: securing all the necessary permits to start your business. Below is a list of the government agencies you need to go to and the permits your need to apply for:  Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) - This is where you register if your enterprise is a single proprietorship. The agency will issue a certificate...