Marca Piña soy sauce brand tries to expand market share

Piñakamasarap Corp., the maker of the popular soy sauce brand Marca Piña, will expand into the Visayas and Mindanao areas after concentrating on the Luzon market in its 30 years of operations.

In an interview, Piñakamasarap president Tian Sy said they will soon aggressively market their soy sauce products to Visayas and Mindanao. "Our presence there is not very strong but we have a good foundation in Luzon."

Sy said they concentrated marketing their products in Luzon for three decades. In fact in Southern Luzon, Marca Piña is the leading soy sauce brand. In Pampanga, Sy said they have captured 20 percent of the market while their market share in Cavite is 30 percent.

"I want a strong nationwide coverage because even at our peak back in the 90’s we were not able to cover the entire country."

Sy said they have also started exporting their products to overseas Filipino workers in the United States, Canada and Italy.

Although he refused to give the company’s actual sales figures, Sy said 10 to 15 percent of their sales come from exports. "I never imagined we would be exporting our products."

Piñakamasarap halted operations from 1993 to 1997 after the company was hounded by union problems. Sy said the company was infiltrated by militants, thus making their union difficult to deal with.

Security concerns have likewise forced Sy and his family to migrate to Canada and wait for things to settle down. Sy said of the three cases filed against the company, two have been resolved with the decision favorable to Piñakamasarap while one remains pending before the Supreme Court.

Upon his return to the country, Sy said he discovered that although the brand Marca Piña still had market recall, other soy sauce makers have eaten up their market share.

"Everyone switched. We had to work hard to regain our customers and until now we still haven’t been successful in getting back all our previous consumers," he said. For now, Sy said he is looking at getting at least 40 percent of the market.

To do this, he said they will focus on distribution, saying he does not want to waste too much of the company’s resources on advertisements if the product is not even available at all stores and supermarkets.