(PH) BEST COUNTRYSIDE BUSINESSES

This is an article from a magazine last October 2005. It's about a real story of a filipino entrepreneur.

WELCOME TO THE SEAWEED COUNTRY:
Zamboanga’s bountiful seas have made it the home of fish processors and the country’s largest supplier of dried seaweed.
By Marjorie Ann R. Duterte

Zhuvaida Pantaran discovered seaweed around 1995 while visiting her father’s coastal hometown in Zamboanga del Sur, where her poor relatives relied solely on seaweed farming to live. There were no traders in Pagadian City then, so most of the seaweed farmers who could travel to Zamboanga City, sell their harvest. “There were times when no buyers came and they stopped planting,” says Pantaran. “They had no source of living other than seaweed farming.” Moved, Pataran used some of her husband’s savings to buy her relatives’ dried seaweed and initially sold five tons at P15.25 a kilogram to her brother’s employer, a seaweed processor. She later supplied him with 50 tons worth P900,000.

Excited by the dried seaweed’s potential, Pantaran studied everything about it and then provided her relatives and other seaweed farmers with Eucheuma Cottonii seedlings, planting materials, pump boats, and cash advances for their daily needs. She borrowed P250,000 as rolling capital from a rural bank in 1997 to expand her business, turning to the big seaweed processors in Cebu including Shemburg, the industry leader. She now supplies Shemburg, Kerry Food Ingredients, and Genu Philippines with 500 to 700 tons of dried seaweed monthly at P36.50 to P38.00 a kilogram. She buys her stocks from nine seaweed-producing towns in Pagadian that she helped develop.

Pantaran’s ZDS Enterprise re-dries and cleans the farmers’ seaweed in her warehouse and separates the good ones from the bad. Buyers pay her per sack after the dried seaweed is weighed. She nets P250,000 a month form the business, and she is thankful that her husband, a contract worker based abroad, no longer needed to leave the country to earn money.

“My first intention was to help, but I found it was very profitable business,” she says.

This is another story that has inspired me and I think for many as well. Zhuvaida Pantaran has not only helped her relatives, but the livelihood of the seaweed farmers community, whose source of living has no guarantee of continues support for them. She has provided them income, in turn, she gained profits. Just like Muhamad Yunus, she has seen the need of her fellowmen from the countryside, and she has come up with a desire to help them not only to improve and develop, but change their lives. From her simple desire to help others, it has given her a big success and wealth. It takes a lot of risk and effort to be successful, but the eagerness and desire to achieve it will make it possible.

When you want your business to be successful, you have to consider the people behind it. These people are those who strive to be in your business and whom you share your goals and visions with. They are the ones who work hard for the success of your business, and you in turn, will help them achieved their goals. The ability to work with these people with humbleness and positive attitude will enhance and strengthen the working conditions inside the business.

Posted by: Jasmin Bautista