A winning combination

According to Wikipedia, marketing is the act of acquiring, satisfying and retaining customers. It is one of the primary components of business management and commerce.

Thus, for any business to thrive, especially one built around a core product, it must offer a reliable-quality product that is either sold directly or through a dealer network capable of providing after-sales care and servicing to preserve its value.

In a successful marketing partnership, all these components must work together to ensure continued customer loyalty and future sales.

One excellent example is the partnership between Toyota Motor Philippines (TMP) and its dealership network, which embodies strong collaboration among the manufacturer, sales teams and dealers, and bolstered by an efficient after-sales and servicing structure. This synergy has helped TMP maintain its position as the No. 1 in car sales in the Philippines.

My interest in the robust partnership of TMP was piqued after meeting one of the top dealers of TMP a couple of years ago, particularly Rene So, whose family owns five major dealerships in Northern Luzon, particularly Toyota Dagupan, Toyota Baguio, Toyota La Union, Toyota Ilocos Norte and Toyota Ilocos Sur.

Not only that, Rene So and his son, actually have the lone distinction of having the first Toyota car museum in Asia outside of Japan, called R Garage, which has around 70 plus Toyota vehicles collected by Rene’s son over several years – with the oldest car made in the 1960s. It is definitely a must-see for car lovers who are traveling north or to Baguio and may want to make a brief detour to R Garage which is located beside their Toyota La Union dealership.

According to Rene, who is truly an interesting personality in his own right because of his geeky interest that ranges from technology, gadgets, drones, travel and photography, radio, computers and computer programming, motor vehicles, motorcycles and bicycles, and so much more.

He has his own YouTube channel – Geeky Gramp, which has an impressive 77,700 followers where he uploads videos of his mechanical “toys” and vehicle build-ups, and some of his travels and meanderings on his various vehicles and his Brompton bike. He also posts videos of vehicle build-ups such as his customization of the Toyota Tamaraw.

However, when he was younger, he actually thought that he would pursue a career involving laboratory research – a sort of mad scientist working in a lab.

He admits that even at a young age, he liked to tinker with stuff, but did not have a clear idea exactly of what career he would pursue. However, being the third of six boys and one sister, he ended up following in the footsteps of his elder brothers, with the eldest and the second taking up electronics and communication, and him opting for chemical engineering. Actually all of the So siblings became engineers.

But as fate would have it, Rene’s dream of becoming a lab rat was not to be because doing lab work required a degree in chemistry, and not chemical engineering, as he thought, which involves the structural elements of the plant such as water and steam.

Even so, Rene admits that finishing the course and completing a college degree was his primary goal, and if not for his engineering classmates, he perhaps would not have taken the test to be a licensed engineer as he was pretty much set on helping out with the family’s hardware and auto supply businesses to help out their widowed mother.

Rene at heart, however, really liked to read and learn, and teach himself about whatever he is interested in. In fact, in the early advent of computerization, Rene was already keen on doing his own stuff, buying his first computer from Radio Shack. Because their business was hardware, he learned and actually loved assembling gadgets and mechanical stuff such as bicycles.

But he also wanted to become a teacher and had even fancied a teaching job at St. Louis College in Baguio where he had studied. It was not meant to be though.

Although the So family’s core business was hardware, they also had an auto supply and when TMP was established in 1988 and put out an advertisement for interested partners to put up a Toyota dealership, a cousin convinced Rene and his family to apply to become an auto dealer.

Their initial application was rejected because the dealership network of TMP prioritized Metro Manila and not yet in the provinces. Fortunately, after five years, TMP wrote them back to ask if they still wanted to be a Toyota dealer.

Thus, by 1995, the So family put up their first Toyota dealership in the north, and has been performing so well that it has become among the top dealers of TMP.

Rene’s passion for learning extended even to computerizing their dealerships’ inventory and accounting. Thus, at the start of their partnership with TMP, he wrote their own inventory and payroll accounting. His ability to write computer programs allowed him to even do a similar program for their rural electricity provider.

What makes Toyota a good brand, according to Rene, “is Toyota’s reliability. It’s more expensive, but you are more expensive because you put in better quality in your product.”

If the buyer’s major concern is price, he acknowledges, there are lower priced competitors, “but in the end... reliability still counts. Maybe they will be using the Chinese brand, but looking forward after three years, no support na.”

In the province, Rene points out that car buyers are “more conservative, they want to be sure. The problem with buying a Chinese brand now is after a few years yung depreciation. Cheap now, but after using it, the value goes down, kalahati na lang... yung presyo... mahal itong isa (half the price of the more expensive one), but yung value remains high... higher resale value.. just the difference when you sell the vehicle, and what you lost in the reselling is what you lost. That makes it more costly.”

(Erratum: Business Snippets mistakenly identified PHILGUARANTEE president and CEO Alberto Pascual as Alfredo Pascual in the column “Malaysia seeks more bilateral trade with Philippines,” published on July 16, 2025. We apologize for the error. – Eds)