From P5,000 seed capital, Roland Quiambao has grown his business with commissions even abroad.

When Mount Pinatubo erupted in 1991 and buried parts of Pampanga in lahar, many businesses in San Fernando folded up as many of the local folk fled the stricken areas in droves. Ironically, the hard times that followed the disaster gave Roland Quiambao, the proprietor of Rolrens Lanterns, the big break he needed for his floundering Christmas lantern-making business.

In 1995, parts of the city of San Fernando were still buried in lahar and the general sentiment was gloomy. “It was at this time that then Mayor Rey Aquino commissioned me to decorate the whole town of San Fernando with colorful lanterns,” he recalls. “This was to encourage the displaced residents to come back to our hometown and to attract tourists and investors to take a look at our town. Our lantern sales more than doubled as a result, with big orders pouring in from all parts of the country as well as from overseas.”

Quiambao has been in the lantern-making trade for 15 years. He started it as a small-scale business in June 1992 with an initial capital of P5,000. He had availed of a loan through the self-employed assistance (SEA) loan program of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD). He was then able to produce and sell 50 lantern frames in the three months that followed.

“This enabled me to settle my first loan in a span of only six months,” he says. “The following year, I borrowed another P10,000 from the DSWD, and in 2005, I was granted a much bigger loan of P200,000 through the government’s ‘One- Town, One Product’ (OTOP ) project. Because of these loan packages, I was able to meet the growing demands of my customers.” (The OTOP project, run by the Department of Trade and Industry, lends money without interest to small businesses.)

But the early years of Quiambao’s business were fraught with difficulties. To augment his meager lantern sales, he was constrained to vend his products house-to-house in the neighborhood and surrounding communities. It was only after word of mouth from satisfied customers had spread that he was able to generate significant income from the craft.

Other than his sheer perseverance, what contributed substantially to the growth of the business was Quiambao’s continuing innovation in the lanternmaking craft. He says that his technique of combining one style with another increased the interest of both his regular and new lantern buyers. “Our interesting designs also give our barangay [Del Pilar] a fighting chance in the annual Giant Lantern Festival that’s held every December in San Fernando.”

One other factor working in Quiambao’s favor is the assembly-line method of lantern production that he had developed. The method gives workers clearly defined tasks in the making of the lanterns, such as framing, pasting, papering, construction, repairing, and finishing. “Depending on one’s creativity, capability, and skills, everyone has a distinct contribution in making sure that our lanterns are world-class and of high quality,” he says.

Quiambao employs 50 out-of-school young people and differently-abled workers as well as 80 subcontractors.