Teacher joins former student in growing shipping company
LE SOLEIL COO Gerardo Dumancas (right) with his former sales agent—now L’ Soleil founder and CEO—Eugenio Ynion Jr.
A former apprentice who does good will always hold in high esteem the teacher, sensei or master responsible for his education.
This is why when the opportunity came for 41-year-old Eugenio Ynion Jr., founder of Le Soleil group of companies, to hire the manager he used to work for in 1993 – when he was still learning the ropes of the shipping business – he pounced on it, appointing Gerardo Dumancas chief operating officer of Le Soleil Shipping Corp.
Not a few in the country’s small shipping industry raised their eyebrows when they learned that Dumancas, an old hand in the shipping industry and the highest ranking Filipino in one of the leading shipping companies in the Philippines, had left a lucrative post to help his former salesman.
Dumancas, however, believes the bold move to be the logical next step to take as he has made himself “irrelevant” in his former company – Evergreen Shipping Agency Philippines Corp. – having trained the next generation of supervisors to take over his former post of deputy senior vice president.
Nowhere else to go
The job was no longer challenging, Dumancas says, and he had nowhere else to go since only Taiwan nationals can occupy the highest positions in the organizational chart.
“I had a good job and I was leading a comfortable life,” says the 51-year-old Dumancas. “But in the end, I was no longer happy to go to work.”
Even then, it took about a month of soul searching and praying before he decided to leave the company after 27 years, and join a firm that was smaller by comparison, but much bigger in terms of ambition, Dumancas says.
“It was really the chance to be able to change things that made me decide to join Jun [Ynion] in his company. The challenge is there, and that makes the job exciting and fulfilling,” explains Dumancas, who graduated from University of Negros Occidental Recoletos with a degree in Industrial Management.
His mandate, Dumancas says, is to professionalize the organization that is engaged in the shipping of cargo from the Philippines to Asia and back through Goldstar, and then from the Philippines to Europe and the United States and back under Israel-based Zim Lines, which Le Soleil started representing in the Philippines in 2009.
Dumancas says the level of fierce competition in the shipping industry gets him to work at Le Soleil as early as 7 in the morning, but he is not complaining. For the veteran, there is nothing like the kick he gets from trying to win export and import cargo orders, such as agricultural produce and export product samples, to prove to himself that he made the right decision when he joined Ynion, who almost single-handedly built Le Soleil to what it is today, a tough contender in the shipping lines, holding its own against foreign and local giants.
Dumancas even has a detailed world map behind his chair at his office, just to remind him of the potential scale of his firm’s operations.
To be profitable in cargo shipping, Dumancas says the trick is to be able to use the ships efficiently, which will require filling the ship to capacity with cargo to bring down shipping costs for customers, especially in these times of high fuel costs. It is also incumbent on the shipping firms to make sure that the cargo arrives on time, all the time.
“All carriers have to be really cost conscious and time conscious as well. Any delay in the ports means an increase in the cost of operations. We should also have a balanced turnaround so that there will be cargo loaded on the ships going in and out of the Philippines,” he explains.
More than the professional
Ynion used to be one of the salesmen taking cargo orders under the direction of Dumancas. The Le Soleil owner proudly says that Dumancas taught him everything there is to know about sales and shipping.
“He taught me how to be a good salesman,” says Ynion, whom Dumancas describes as one of the best in his batch of salesmen, often exceeding his monthly quota.
But more than the professional, it is the personal relationship that Ynion treasures. He says Dumancas was there for him at the lowest points in his life, when he had no money to pay the rent and no more food to eat.
“He did not abandon me, and I never forgot what he did,” says Ynion, adding that Dumancas at one point did not just lend him money and offered to put a roof over his head, but also tried to nourish him spiritually through Bible studies.
The two did part ways – Dumancas continued to climb the ladder of Evergreen Shipping while Ynion went out to find his own fortune – though they never really fell out of touch. Ynion would still go to Dumancas for advice while Dumancas looked at Ynion with pride because of everything that he has accomplished despite the stumbling blocks hurled his way.
Thus they believe it was fate that brought them back together again, although this time with Ynion on top, not just as chief executive officer but as majority owner of Le Soleil.
Dumancas, however, does not mind the switch in roles because he shares his pupil’s and fellow Ilonggo’s cause of making Le Soleil a bigger player in the industry.
No other man for the job
Besides, Dumancas feels a certain sense of pride that his former student has made good.
For his part, Ynion says that he did not really have any other man in mind for the job of professionalizing his growing organization because he believes that only Dumancas has the integrity and the knowledge that he badly needs to take Le Soleil to the next level.
Ynion admits that he could no longer do the work himself because the company was growing, and he was finding it difficult to separate the personal from the professional. He needed a third party to help him achieve his objectives of putting in place the systems and the procedures to keep Le Soleil growing and its operations running smoothly.
Dumancas has his work cut out for him, but the devoted Christian says he is more than happy to take on the role of master to a new set of students.
