Negosyong Pinoy 2006 is currently being held at the Megamall from October 27 to 29. It is the 1st ever micro entrepreneur trade fair that not only showcases products for sale, but also various business opportunities and organizations offering entrepreneurial education.
I went in seeking businesses that would appeal to me as an artist, as well as education on setting up a business. My interests were primarily for information technology, exhibition, design, and basically the creative industries. I’m not exactly a crafts person… so I kinda bypassed those ones, but I do like to be able to get creative with the business itself.
The recent success of the Komikon 2006 is just another factor in me seeking out possible opportunities for my work to get distributed, as well as opportunities to benefit artists like myself to do the same. But even before that, I’ve been inspired to look into business because of experiences with friends, books on wealth published in America, Business World newspaper, and Entrepreneur magazines. This is also coincides with my look into financial instruments offered by banks and insurance companies.
After going the entire venue of the trade fair several times - here were some booths of interest to me:
- The Department of Trade and Industry had their own booth naturally. By far my expectations for education were met here. They were selling this JAMPACKED kit all about starting a business:
150Php ONLY for all that material!!! The kit was a super bargain. The kit itself had a pretty functional design, which gave me ideas on how I could make a kit of my own for Pixel Pintura.
- E-load companies. There were at least 3 of them. With less than 500Php or even for free you can become a retailer for Globe, Smart, Sun telecom pre-paid load. You can even retail load for online games, pre-paid internet usage, LBC flowers, and stuff I haven’t heard of!! Easy to setup, easy to maintain, you can even get your own mobile phone reloaded at a discount using this service. Those are the reasons why I found this type of business interesting. It did cross my mind however that the profit margins were pretty meager, the retailer best have a brick & mortar store where people come & go. It made me wish I owned an internet cafe.
- The Center for Small Enterpreneurs is an organization with the goal of building entrepreneurs for others. Lovely lovely people. You can really feel the camaraderie they share as they pursue financial success together. The have the Ka-Entrep program wherein they train would-be entrepreneurs. In fact they had various Ka-Entrep graduate batches set up at the trade fair.
While I wasn’t looking to start anything similar to what the different batches were doing, I couldn’t help feel the passion they had for their products. Passion is number one in my book. - Three words - continuous ink systems. There were at least 3 different booths showcasing them, each with different inks and ink capacities. It’s a convincing investment for me as a digital artist. I will likely buy a new EPSON printer as a result..
- Heatpress shirt & mug printing machines were being displayed at one booth. I’ve seen these before and I’m sure artists are familiar that the technology exists. For short and frequent orders for custom shirts, this technology would be quite suitable, I think. But for large volume orders and orders that are few & far between - take caution.
- Another booth had a franchise opportunity for a desktop printing place. A small service bureau, if you’re familiar with those. Includes ID photo, print, and lamination, as well as other fairly creative (though not very sophisticated) items. They were also selling a machine to make button pins. Which would have been cooler if they had the actual machine being demonstrated there.
- You can’t go through that trade fair without seeing all the food cart & kiosk franchises. I expected to find the EDGE food franchisor from the Komikon to be there, but instead I found a whole lot of others with similar selling points - no royalty, no renewal fees. Let’s face it, the packages each franchise were offering are similar. Training, initial stocks, uniforms, installations, these were standard. In the end you have to consider the image, the brand, the cost, and the kind of people who own the business. Can you stand the site of all those things?
After making your choice, it’s up to you, the franchisee, to find employees and location. (Imagine I just learned that this year.) The artist in me just wants to sit home all day and work my craft. Whether or not a franchise is feasible for who makes his career an artist remains a questionable as I have no role models to draw from.
- Now this isn’t a booth, but celebrities Robert Seña and his wife Isay Alvarez were there to give a performance and promote their latest album “Dueto” as well as an upcoming concert. Their business is show businesses. They had made a company to focus on that and to open doors into that direction.
This is much like what Gerry Alanguilan and Gilbert Monsanto have done with Komikero Publishing and Sacred Mountain Publishing, respectively. It is artists creating companies with the intention of expanding the reach of their work. A large part of it involves the exposure and the satisfaction of being able to leverage yourself as an artist through your own business. The difference lies whether you work for your business or your business works for you. It is whether or not your business can continue to profit even if you, the artist, stop working.
All in all, the Negosyong Pinoy trade fair was both educational and practical for me. But more Spirit-searching is necessary for me to ascertain both my passion for and potential in business.
