Sell
A son’s luck
Disengaging from a thriving business owned by his father, new college graduate takes on the challenges of a Wyeth distributorship in his province
By Mishell M. Malabaguio
Stepping out of the shadow of a parent may be a hard thing to do, but this is precisely what Jefferson Tan, 27, did when he decided to become a distributor of Wyeth, a well-known brand of formula milk.
Tan already got deeply involved in the family business—the Good Luck Supermarket in Guagua, Pampanga, which had a branch each in the barangays of Sto. Niño and San Roque. He recalls: “I was seven or eight years old when my dad literally forced me to learn how to sell. I would sell toys, bread, and hotdogs especially during the Christmas season.” Indeed, as directed by his father Feliciano, Tan was already managing the San Roque branch of the supermarket by the time he entered high school.
In 1998, Wyeth offered Tan’s father an exclusive distributorship for its products, but the latter refused because he already had his hands full managing Good Luck Supermarket. At that time, however, Tan was about to graduate from college, so his father asked him if he was interested in handling the Wyeth distributorship himself. Jefferson immediately accepted the offer. He recalls: “I wanted somehow to branch out from the family business.”
So even before his graduation that year, Tan put up the business and named it Good Luck Sales Corp. He borrowed P2 million from his father for the purchase of delivery trucks, the lease of the needed warehouse space, and his initial order of milk products. Wyeth then gave him the license to distribute five of its milk products—Bona, S26, Bonamil, Bonakid, and Promil—in Region III, which consists of the provinces of Pampanga, Tarlac, Bulacan, Nueva Ecija, Bataan, and Zambales.
The first item in his distributorship agenda was to get to know all the grocery stores, supermarkets, public markets, and sari-sari stores in his sales territory. He got the list of all the stores in Region III that had registered with the Department of Trade and Industry, after which he and his team surveyed the whole of the region, entering every street there to find every store that could be made an outlet for his products.
Some of the stores would refuse to carry the milk products for fear of not being able to sell them, so Tan went about educating the storeowners. He would suggest that they place at least a trial order of two boxes of each of the Wyeth products. In this way, he was able to open something like 500 outlets.
Tan’s milk distributorship prospered and in less than two years, he was able to gradually pay back his P2-million debt from his father as well as buy more delivery trucks and cover his overhead expenses.
Despite having exclusive distribution rights to Wyeth products in Region III, Tan is finding tight competition from some Manila-based distributors. Because they carry various product lines, they are able to sell the milk products at lower prices,” he explains. “Since our margin is small, we can’t match them by lowering our prices. Instead, what we are doing is to compete through better service. We visit our retailers weekly even if they don’t make any orders. We help them check their stocks and help them arrange the merchandise in their shelves.”
One of his tools for establishing a relationship with his clients is supplying them goods on liberal payment terms, but the practice has its drawbacks. He had incurred annual bad debts of about half million pesos as a result; in fact, there was a year when the bad debts doubled. To compensate for the losses, he tapped more outlets and became more stringent in screening them.
Although an uncle of his and the family as a whole are helping him run the business, Tan makes the major decisions for Good Luck Sales. At present, the company distributes Wyeth milk products to 4,500 outlets, using 19 delivery trucks to sell an average of 25,000 cases a month. Tan feels that he has already saturated the market and says he is ready to handle other product lines if Wyeth would allow.
Contact Details:
JEFFERSON TAN
Good Luck Sales Corp.
St. Dominic Subdivision,
Olongapo-Gapan Road, Dolores
City of San Fernando, Pampanga
Telephone: (045) 963-0366
Tan already got deeply involved in the family business—the Good Luck Supermarket in Guagua, Pampanga, which had a branch each in the barangays of Sto. Niño and San Roque. He recalls: “I was seven or eight years old when my dad literally forced me to learn how to sell. I would sell toys, bread, and hotdogs especially during the Christmas season.” Indeed, as directed by his father Feliciano, Tan was already managing the San Roque branch of the supermarket by the time he entered high school.
In 1998, Wyeth offered Tan’s father an exclusive distributorship for its products, but the latter refused because he already had his hands full managing Good Luck Supermarket. At that time, however, Tan was about to graduate from college, so his father asked him if he was interested in handling the Wyeth distributorship himself. Jefferson immediately accepted the offer. He recalls: “I wanted somehow to branch out from the family business.”
So even before his graduation that year, Tan put up the business and named it Good Luck Sales Corp. He borrowed P2 million from his father for the purchase of delivery trucks, the lease of the needed warehouse space, and his initial order of milk products. Wyeth then gave him the license to distribute five of its milk products—Bona, S26, Bonamil, Bonakid, and Promil—in Region III, which consists of the provinces of Pampanga, Tarlac, Bulacan, Nueva Ecija, Bataan, and Zambales.
The first item in his distributorship agenda was to get to know all the grocery stores, supermarkets, public markets, and sari-sari stores in his sales territory. He got the list of all the stores in Region III that had registered with the Department of Trade and Industry, after which he and his team surveyed the whole of the region, entering every street there to find every store that could be made an outlet for his products.
Some of the stores would refuse to carry the milk products for fear of not being able to sell them, so Tan went about educating the storeowners. He would suggest that they place at least a trial order of two boxes of each of the Wyeth products. In this way, he was able to open something like 500 outlets.
Tan’s milk distributorship prospered and in less than two years, he was able to gradually pay back his P2-million debt from his father as well as buy more delivery trucks and cover his overhead expenses.
Despite having exclusive distribution rights to Wyeth products in Region III, Tan is finding tight competition from some Manila-based distributors. Because they carry various product lines, they are able to sell the milk products at lower prices,” he explains. “Since our margin is small, we can’t match them by lowering our prices. Instead, what we are doing is to compete through better service. We visit our retailers weekly even if they don’t make any orders. We help them check their stocks and help them arrange the merchandise in their shelves.”
One of his tools for establishing a relationship with his clients is supplying them goods on liberal payment terms, but the practice has its drawbacks. He had incurred annual bad debts of about half million pesos as a result; in fact, there was a year when the bad debts doubled. To compensate for the losses, he tapped more outlets and became more stringent in screening them.
Although an uncle of his and the family as a whole are helping him run the business, Tan makes the major decisions for Good Luck Sales. At present, the company distributes Wyeth milk products to 4,500 outlets, using 19 delivery trucks to sell an average of 25,000 cases a month. Tan feels that he has already saturated the market and says he is ready to handle other product lines if Wyeth would allow.
Contact Details:
JEFFERSON TAN
Good Luck Sales Corp.
St. Dominic Subdivision,
Olongapo-Gapan Road, Dolores
City of San Fernando, Pampanga
Telephone: (045) 963-0366
