From store to depot: Building the Wilcon brand

William Belo

In 1977, William Belo founded a small hardware store called Wilcon Builder’s Supply. More than two decades after in 2003, he expanded to the much bigger one-stop shop Wilcon Depot.

Today, Wilcon is market leader in home improvement retailing. It is also a Hall of Fame awardee of the Philippine Retailers Association.

Belo shares his entrepreneurial journey, which will culminate in Wilcon’s planned initial public offering in March 2017 to coincide with the governmentís planned P8-trillion infrastructure spending.

Q: What unmet needs were you trying to satisfy when you started?

A: In 1977, Wilcon started with an initial 60-square-meter (sqm) store to provide the basic needs of the timeówhich was to have choices in different construction finishing items. During that period, the market had very limited finishing material options, which were mostly locally produced.

Seeing the opportunity, Wilcon started importing Italian ceramic tiles, Italian sanitary wares and other imported product lines to complement the existing local products available.

In 2003, we started the depot concept primarily due to the limited store size of our then current store formats of 2,000-sqm. At the same time, we had a vision of providing the Filipino consumers with a one-stop shop solution that will have all construction supplies and home improvement items under one roof.

Q: How has the landscape of the industry changed since you started?

A: Forty years ago, there was only one brand of ceramic tile, a single brand of sanitary ware, only two for fittings and two or three for hardware items that were locally available. The number of choices in brands, styles and designs was very limited.

Fast forward to the present, we have close to 20 brands from Europe and Asia in just the ceramic tile category alone. The available brands of sanitary wares in the country come from all over the world. What’s even better, the prices have gone down a lot due to competition.

I very clearly remember a square meter of Spanish tiles in the í70s was priced at around P1,300. Nowadays, home builders can buy good quality European tiles for as low as P700 per sqm. The dynamics of competition! Of course, the ultimate winner here is the consumer.

Q: Inventory management is a key success factor in retail. You now have around 90,000 items. How are you excelling in inventory turns within your network?

A: Inventory management is indeed one of the biggest success factors of any retail business especially when you consider Wilcon, which directly sources close to 45 percent of its product lines. We make use of information technologyóour software systemsóto enable us in managing the right inventory mix at the right place and at the right time.

Q: Other home depot brands have emerged. What is Wilcon’s sustainable competitive advantage?

A: As part of our brand proposition, we commit excellent customer experience through our well-trained and knowledgeable personnel. The Wilcon story starts from the moment they enter the store, shop and choose their items and then check out or ask for delivery. All these are executed by our customer expert managers, our entry-level managers, even down to the baggers. They all regularly undergo training, attend refresher courses on customer service, product orientation and inter-office/employee relations.

Another advantage is the product mix. We make sure that in every product category, we offer multiple choices and we make sure that our prices are the most practical in the market.

Q: What is the direction of your house brands such as Pozzi, Direct Hardware?

A: Our house brands are now very popular with our customers. We make sure these brands are sourced from reputable manufacturers that meet international quality standards.  This way, we can be sure that these products are of good quality in respect to their usage and provide economic value to our customers through competitive prices.

Some of these brands are now widely used by our customers: direct consumers, institutional and commercial.  You can find our brands in a lot of public areas, such as restaurants, hotels and condominiums. Further, we have also worked with some of the top developers in the country in using our own brands.

Q: What is your greatest learning after being in the business for more or less 40 years?

A: From a single 60-sqm shop, we have grown to a 36-branch retail chain nationwide with a selling area of close to 250,000 sqm. We continue to source new and innovative products for the needs of the Philippine market, improve our services, train our people to be certified experts in the field of sales, and organically develop managers from the ranks.

One of the greatest legacies that Wilcon has and one we are very proud of is that we are a local company with international standards. From a four-man store way back in 1977, we are now a company with more than 4,500 directly hired employees and more than 2,000 promodizers from our business partners.

We have learned through the years that we cannot be where we are without our partners and stakeholders. Though Wilcon imports a lot of its products, one of our primary objectives is to help the local manufacturers who we see as our partners. We make sure to give priority to locally produced products and make sure our imports are complementary to the locally manufactured items, which are also prominently displayed in all our stores. This ensures that they also grow with us as partners.