Getting The Brother In Law Started In Business
A Simple Solution To An Often Asked Question.
If you are married to a Filipina then the odds are that you will have at least one brother in law, possibly several. Some of them may be hard working and industrious, some may be loafers and lazier than a dead possum. At some stage you may be approached to fund his latest business venture and there is merit in helping him develop a business rather than rely on handouts.
What I am about to outline is a simple business I feel has a good chance of success in the Philipines, in both rural and urban areas. I suggested this business model some years ago on a Yahoo Group I no
longer belong to and it was canned by all the experts. The majority of them telling me that the product just won’t be bought by Filipinos. Funny how the largest selling single item in supermarket meat freezers today in the Philippines is the very product I had in mind!
That product? Hot Dogs. The freezers are chock full of them, numerous brands and row upon row of hot dogs. I have seen hot dog kiosks spring up in the malls and long lines of people queueing up to buy one of these items so many “ex-pat experts” assured me would never sell here.
Why do I like the Hot Dog business? Firstly it is cheap and easy to get into. You need a stand that you can carry around yourself, I envisage two boxes slung off a pole carried over the shoulder. One box can have the supplies and the other the hot water to cook the dogs in. It can be a straw box, that is insulated with straw to keep the water hot, or it can have a small stove in the bottom for heating the water.
The other box carries the dogs, buns, cheese, sauces and tongs, knapkins etc. It is a simple business to run. You buy your hotdogs, buns, cheese and sauces and cost each one out, I figure on P5-7. You then set a price, I like P10-P20 for plain and add P10 for cheese, sauce is free. If your box holds 100 hot dogs, then selling out when they cost P5 to buy and sell for P10 means you should have P1000 turnover, or P500 net profit. If Dong comes back with no more dogs or buns and less than that, he is ripping you off.
He will either be eating them himself, giving them away free to his friends or selling them and pocketing the cash. Whatever is happening to the cash, this business model allows for early detection of fraud or poor operations and so you can minimise your shrinkage or losses.
A good pitch, as we call a place to stand and sell doggies, should see him sell the whole load of 100 and be heading back in for a resupply. If you clear P500and give him P250 for his efforts, that isn’t a bad days wages for a Filipino. If your hot dog stand (mobile) cost you P5000 to build and stock, then you can see your investment returned within 20 operating days or so. Time to make a stack more of them and hire more staff or give Dong his unit and let him keep the whole of the profit.
I would envisage him lasting a week without supervision, someone to ensure the ingredients are freshly bought and the unit kept clean and so on. It would be far better to maintain the units yourself and hire them out to sellers for a daily rental, say P700 fully stocked with the seller able to earn P300 in just a few short hours if they find the right pitch.
Setting up outside a major school or college takes up a tiny amount of sidewalk and can easily see the load being sold out in an hour or two. If you were to ensure the cleanliness of the sellers and also perhaps fit them out in a simple but clean uniform of logoed t-shirt and cap, use plastic surgical gloves and so on, I am sure the consumer confidence would have them buying repeatedly.
Of course you can make a more elaborate stand based on a trisikad or even a tricycle, but the object is to keep things simple and costs down. Even if you were clearing only P100-200 per day, yet had ten or more sellers out there, you could easily bring in P30-40,000 a month, a very nice little earner while still giving others a job.
Whenever you look at business opportunities in the Philippines, especially those designed to keep a relative in business, you need to keep certain criteria in mind. Firstly it should be cheap to set up,
cheap to run and easily monitored to ensure honesty. You need to be able to supervise yet not get too involved and of course, it needs to make money. One of the secrets to making money in the Philippines I have found, is to make lots of little amounts from lots of little people, lots of times.
If you try to make too much too soon and run the business by western standards or expectations, you will soon be pulled back down into the basket with the other crabs! Give it a whirl, but not in Cebu, ok? My guys are going to out on the streets in no time!
Loading ...
