Long-running Baguio bazaar lets small enterprises bloom

THE CORDILLERA Network of Development NGO & POS promotes and sells healthy organic food and drinks at the festival.

BAGUIO CITY—Twenty years of the Baguio Flower Festival’s Session Blooms bazaar (formerly Session Road in Bloom) have provided profit and market prominence for many small town businesses, some of which are not even homegrown.

Paul Bidaja, proprietor of Mumunting Bagay (which deals in arts, crafts and Christmas decorations), is from Bulacan. But he has been participating in Session Blooms since 1995 when Session Road began hosting the bazaar.

JUANITO Baterzal of Benelco Arts & Crafts holds a wall clock with colorful dried botanical seeds and foliage.

The very first bazaar was a humble event, so Mumunting Bagay sold items beneath a huge umbrella, he said.

“During the first years [of Session Blooms] we paid rent to the establishment when we pitched our stall outside its front door. I paid P3,000 for the three days we sold products outside [the defunct] Star Cafe. During the 20th Session Blooms, we paid P33,000 for a booth we used for eight days,” he said.

Bidaja said he liked the first years of the bazaar when things were simpler and participating traders boasted of innovative Baguio items.

“Our biggest seller had always been our refrigerator magnets, which were unique because these were made from recycled materials. Our first designs were shaped like vegetables, the strawberry and the sunflower. We have evolved. We also produce buri bags for marketing. We now sell kitchen clocks, key holders and towel holders,” he said.

Moises and Zenaida Cating, who own Baguio’s Solibao Restaurant, have been a power couple at the bazaar for 20 years. They drew repeat customers when tourists discovered their establishment through the bazaar.

“We also participate because we don’t want any other establishment to throw us out of business by setting up shop in front of our restaurant,” Moises said.

A TOWEL holder from Mumunting Bagay Arts & Crafts.

Commercial flower displays were free on the first year of then Session Road in Bloom, said Liza Acosta, daughter of Lino Aromin who runs the Aromin Orchids and Anthuriums at the Baguio orchidarium.

“Around 30 plant growers used to sell flowers produced in Benguet and Mt. Province in special flower carts on Session Road. At the recent Session Blooms, however, only five of us remained,” she said.

Lino Aromin said the bazaar provided them the avenue to display new flower varieties and to showcase how these items could be exhibited in home landscapes and gardens.

Consuelo Valencia has been bringing Benelco Arts and Crafts to Baguio from Taytay, Rizal, for the last 10 years, “because we earn well.”

The 20th Session Blooms also featured organic food produced by farmers and displayed at the booth of the Cordillera Network of Development NGO and POs, Inc. (Cordnet). Leilanie Guinto, a Cordnet employee, said the bazaar helped bring marketing contacts to the farmers.

This year’s bazaar was the first for Anette Duyor who brought Cagayan Valley organic home decorations. “I hope it drew interest for my products,” she said. Reports from EV Espiritu and Jhoanna Marie Buenaobra, Inquirer Northern Luzon