Fragrant nuts

Did you know 1: The Department of Science and Technology has developed an air freshener using the essential oil derived from the pili tree.

The unprocessed canarium resin is currently selling at P60 a kilo – for export to perfume-makers in France (who, of course, charge the earth for their end-product). The beauty here is the tree doesn’t die with resin tapping, which means farmers can harvest those nuts as well.

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Did you know 2: Christian music retail chain House of Praise has a unique franchising model – it doesn’t charge a franchise fee nor royalty. Just pay for the inventory and lease a space in a mall of your choice and you’re open for business.

To date, it has 70 outlets nationwide and business is said to be exceptionally good, particularly in these depressing times.

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Jollibee Foods Corp. president Tony Tan Caktiong has come a long way from asking friends like couple Rene Palma and Tina Monzon-Palma to get a franchise at (gasp! and double gasp!) P50,000. Messrs. Tan and Palma were batchmates at the Asian Institute of Management.

Today, Jollibee is being studied by MBA students at Harvard University, one of the original partners in putting up AIM. The Harvard case study of how a local company can beat a multinational company at its own game mentions the Philippines once – and that was necessary to place Jollibee in an Asian context.

It wasn’t an easy climb for Mr. Tan, who saw his parents – his beloved mom regularly visits the Jollibee headquarters to check on her children – work from early morning to late at night to keep a restaurant going the old-fashioned way (read: no systems in place).

In its early years, Jollibee didn’t even have money to fund a location feasibility study so the strategy was to surround one McDonald’s store with two or three smaller Jollibee stores. (The rationale here was that McDonald’s Philippine franchise, George Yang, had enough money to case the place and do a traffic count before giving the go signal to open a store).

Another strategy – which Mr. Tan and his brothers personally did, in large part because nobody wanted to do it – was to check the trash bins of the competitor after closing time to determine consumption patterns.

What has kept Jollibee going then and now is Mr. Tan’s vision, which is no longer limited to the Filipino consumers.

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Forget about eating out at the Century Park Hotel today and tomorrow. That’s the venue of the two-day 2004 Asia Pacific Bankers Congress, which will be attended by 249 confirmed delegates from 23 countries representing 118 banks.

Oh yes, nine banks from six countries – hopefully one from the Philippines but everything’s hush-hush – will be receiving Asian Banking Awards.