Usapang Business: One small step at a time

He was just a boy who dreamed of lifting his family from grinding poverty. This is what pushed Arden Siarot, the recipient of the 2002 President Ramon Magsaysay Outstanding Filipino Worker under the self-employed category, to succeed as an entrepreneur. Here is the story of Siarot, who overcame the many challenges of life to become a manufacturer and exporter of high-end quality furniture.

Life in the cemetery

Born to a poor family that lived in a makeshift house near a cemetery, Siarot made his first peso by selling melted wax to candle makers. The eldest in a family of six, it was his way of contributing to the family’s income. His father, Agustin, was a tombstone maker and a graveyard sculptor while his mother, Rosario, was a dressmaker. Life was difficult for the Siarots and they often had only tinugbong, which was leftover rice mixed with water and sugar, for dinner. To earn extra money, he would sell sweet potatoes and boiled bananas in the neighborhood. Whenever there was a burial, Siarot was at the cemetery. He would pretend to be one of the guests and fall in line for food. He would even back to the end of the line several times to bring food to his siblings hiding behind a tree.

Shortly after graduating from elementary school, Siarot found work as a helper in an automotive shop. This allowed him to enroll at a high school night program. The routine was the same. He would walk to school, which was four kilometers away from home. Siarot failed his first year because he could not afford a set of uniforms and the guard would refuse to let him in. His parents couldn’t afford to buy him a pair of pants so he wore shorts to school, to the ridicule of his schoolmates. And because he lacked books, his teacher would not let him in the classroom.

Working student

An aunt, who worked as a nursemaid, took pity on him and asked her employers to hire her nephew as a helper in exchange for meals and a set of uniforms. His housework started at dawn. He minded a small store, manually pumped water for the household needs, and cleaned the house. At 3 p.m., he was off to school and would not get home until around 10 p.m. Once home, he tended the store again, which would not close until 11 p.m.

This was his routine for four years. Siarot enrolled in a vocational course to allow him to work his way through college. He enrolled at the Don Bosco Manpower Training Program for a one-year course on electro-mechanics. Luckily, the school hired him after graduation as a maintenance electrician.

Aside from paying for his college degree, Siarot would help his family to make ends meet, even sending a brother to high school. Sometimes, he could not help but cry over the heavy burden he carried on his shoulders, yet he never succumbed to self-pity.

First big break

In 1988, Siarot graduated with a degree in electrical engineering from the University of San Jose Recollectos. His seven years in Don Bosco enabled him to acquire different technical skills from machinery maintenance to machine fabrication. The school offered him a teaching job, which he readily accepted, seeing it as a window of opportunity.

One day, an Italian fine jewelry manufacturer at the Mactan Export Processing Zone went to the Don Bosco machine shop to have an automatic control system of his machine fabricated. Since it was complex, Siarot went to the factory to install it. The Italian was so impressed with his work that he offered him a job. Siarot was torn between keeping his teaching job and accepting the offer. But the Italian was persistent.

A priest at the school advised him to accept the Italian’s offer. He maintained the machinery that manufactured fine jewelry and became head of the engineering department from 1989 to 1991. It was there that he met his future wife, Jen Elizabeth Calomarde, a certified public accountant, when she was hired as bookkeeper at the factory. The two were married in June 1992.

Own business

When the factory shifted to novelty items and desktop accessories, Siarot learned woodworking. In 1993, sensing an opportunity to start his own business, he quit his job. Using their savings, Siarot and his wife started to manufacture miniature dining sets, together with his brother, Rogelio, and their cousins, at their rented apartment in Labangon. An order came from a big department store in Cebu and Siarot earned P5,000, a princely sum to him then.

In 1994, the Italian, now working with a big furniture exporter, came to Siarot and asked him to make silver solder wire. Since he didn’t have enough capital, Siarot went to a friend that supplied him gold and silver. He got a 30-day credit term for his supply. Then, he managed to convince his former employer to sell him the needed equipment on credit. The job order got Siarot started as a sub-contractor.

Fallback

He then went on to fabricate intricate brass items and furniture. Siarot’s fine craftsmanship brought the orders flowing. But Siarot worried about his fledgling firm’s dependency on orders from exporters. He needed a fallback.

So, in 1997, he took a gamble and participated in a sub-contractor’s fair, displaying his desktop accessories. Not wanting to directly compete with his furniture-exporting clients, he developed new products like jewelry boxes, frames, and other desktop accessories.

Earning the ire of his clients was a big risk but the gamble paid off. He met his first direct buyer–an American who purchased pieces for the Travola Collection of Oggetti in the US.

Siarot was now on his way to becoming an exporter.

But Siarot’s success at attracting orders became a tough lesson. He had to turn down several buyers due to his inability to meet supply deadlines. He still had to sub-contract but his orders were few and far between. The next two years were the toughest for him. But he focused on building his manufacturing capability and borrowed money from a bank to invest in a plant. Slowly, he weaned his business away from sub-contracting.

In 2000, Siarot believed he was ready to join an international furniture trade fair in Cebu. There, he met his Australian furniture and Arab accessory buyers. Thus began his transition from sub-contractor to legitimate furniture maker and exporter.

Arden Classic was launched in 2000. He handles the designs, quality and production and his wife handles the financial and marketing.

What began in a rented apartment is now a multimillion peso company.