MANILA, Philippines—Tony Santos’ first entrepreneurship venture was not a total disaster. He had decided to put up a bakery along a busy road in Manila’s Pandacan area after quitting his job as a sales executive in one of the country’s multinational consumer product manufacturing firms.
The bakery business, however, wasn’t turning out to be a walk in the park. In particular, he couldn’t live with the human resource problems—largely, errant bakers who had a habit of going on vacation leave at their own convenience. “I had to go to baking school just to be able to substitute for the absent bakers,” Tony said.
But even when Tony decided to close shop, neighbors continued to hound him with orders. One particular product stood out: “puto.” “There was one year when we did not have a Christmas and a New Year,” he said. The orders of the Filipino version of the cupcake just kept coming in that even his wife Mai had to pitch in and help when not at work.
Tony was turning out to be a one-man bakery, yet his market was confined to the households in Pandacan plus his wife’s officemates. While waiting to fill out the next orders, he saw an opportunity to expand his business outside the boundaries of his community.
He broached the idea of packaging and selling the puto mix to his wife. “Why don’t we teach people how to make their own “puto.” We could even be helping them set up their own businesses,” Tony said.
Together, husband and wife started working on an acceptable formulation. Later, they took a two-liner in the classified advertisement pages of a broadsheet and specifically targeted people who were on the lookout for a business opportunity to augment their income.
There were a few phone inquiries in the beginning, followed by a couple of walk-ins who showed interest in buying a bag or two. Tony patiently taught those who showed interest how to cook “puto” using his pre-mixes and, more importantly, how to earn from it.
When some customers came back for more—and bigger—orders, Tony realized he was on to something worth his time. His market suddenly opened up, bringing him to the provinces of Cavite and Laguna and even to parts of the Visayas and Mindanao for free cooking demonstrations not just to sell his instant mixes but also to help fulfill dreams of housewives or couples of having their own successful businesses.
Tony also started to expand his business, first by discarding his manual mixing bowl and replacing it with a semiautomatic drum-type mixer and sifter that was custom-designed by a friend and sent to a local shop for fabrication.
New mixes were next developed—“kutsinta,” “bibingka,” “maja blanca,” chocolate cupcakes and brownies—that also had the potential of expanding his customers’ business operations.
Tony’s business took on a name, too: MICS Commodities Inc., MICS being a pun for the products they were selling, while at the same time taking off from the initial letters of his wife’s full name, Maria Isabel Catis Santos.
Mai eventually resigned from her post as nurse in one of Manila’s five-star hotels to devote full time to helping Tony with the business while giving their two growing children more attention.
Whatever investments they had lost when their bakery closed, they were able to recoup in just a couple of years. Tony likes to talk about how they were able to refurbish their old house and buy another lot where they built the structure to house the production plant, office and demonstration kitchen.
But the success of the mixes is not just their story, Tony says. Since they started the business in the early 80s, the Santoses remember those who had put in sweat equity more than the financial capital to expand their “kakanin,” or native delicacies, making and vending businesses.
“They would call and invite us to the graduation of a son or daughter or to tell us that one of their children will be going abroad. When we congratulate them, they say: ‘Mang Tony, galing ho sa puto ninyo ’yan [that came from your puto].’ That would really make my heart swell with pride,” Tony says.
Invitations to conduct free cooking demonstrations still flood their modest office, but are now more often passed on to the corresponding area distributor. This allows for the marketing network to expand faster, while at the same time, reaching out to more people interested in setting up their own kakanin business.
Tony is still surprised just how far his mixes have traveled. “One time, I came home with a tray of tasty puto that I had bought from a popular bakery. I was excited that the bakery had come up with something that tasted like our product. It turned out, it was our product!”
There was this small bakery in Albay province that ordered puto mixes during its early years. MICS still supply pre-mixes to the bakery, along with several other branches that were opened in succeeding years. “In one of their recent branch blessings, I received an all-expenses-paid invitation from the owner to attend,” says Tony. The puto, it turned out, was one of their bestsellers.
Tony has no regrets having given up his own bakery. For him, there is nothing that can equal the satisfaction of knowing and realizing that MICS has helped others in much more meaningful—and profitable—ways.
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