Unhappy distributors

Okay, so some distributors of San Miguel Corp. haven’t been too happy with the new distribution set-up in place by president and chief operating officer Ramon Ang. Now, that unhappiness has spread to San Miguel subsidiaries, which have replicated the model.

Under the set-up, the distributors take up more of the risk at less margins.

On the one hand, they must meet quotas set by an area sales manager, who is of course, San Miguel employees. On the other hand, the distributors entrepreneurs have their own network of dealers, whose trade discounts come from the distributors’ own margins rather than from San Miguel.

As a result, Mr. Ang has been able to bring up sales revenues by pushing distributors to buy more and more inventory (whether or not the products are moving as fast at the retail level) while cutting down on costs, including salaries.

Distributors have been less fortunate in their bottom lines.

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Tupperware Phils. Inc. president Jose de Jesus Buenrostro has rescheduled the maintenance shutdown of the Laguna plant regularly scheduled on the last two weeks of December to early next year.

You see, Tupperware has had an eight-percent surge in demand for the fourth quarter alone, a significant figure considering sales of the direct seller grew by five percent for the entire 2002.

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For those who want to do some Christmas shopping on the Internet, Ring of Power in the "Lord of the Rings" movie trilogy is being sold for $400 here’s some tips on protecting your online transactions. The tips come from Citibank.

• "Do business only with companies you know and trust. Make sure that you carefully review the privacy and security statements of the web sites on which you transact business.

• "Verify the address of every website, known as the URL.

• "Do not send sensitive personal or account information unless it is encrypted on a secure website. Please note that regular e-mails are not encrypted.

• "Look for the padlock symbol at the bottom of the web page to ensure the site is running in secure mode before you input sensitive information. Double click on the padlock image. Then, the security information page will be displayed, confirming the validity of the security certificate of the site.

• "Use strong passwords or PINS for your accounts. Choose passwords that are difficult for others to guess.

• "Make sure that your home computer has the most current anti-virus software.

• "If you need to use a public computer, make sure you do not save your sign-on information when logging in.

• "Log off properly. Do not just close your browser. Rather, ensure that your online banking session is terminated.

• "Monitor your transactions. Review your order confirmations, credit card, and bank statements as soon as you receive them to make sure that your statements reflect your transactions. Immediately report any irregularities."