Biz icon urges entrepreneurs to see opportunities in crisis

Because market situations are things that are uncertain and greatly depends upon uncontrollable forces of economic elements, an icon in the local paper industry urged entrepreneurs to always evolve themselves to cope with changes in the market and the economy.

Henry Lim, the business legend behind the success of the Sterling Paper Group of Companies who was in Cebu recently shared his vision and urged entrepreneurs to “face crisis head on” and take every challenges as opportunities.

Lim is the chairman and chief executive officer of the Sterling Group of Companies that comprises: Central Bookstore Inc., Expressions Stationery Paper Shops Inc., S.P. Properties Inc., Sterling Global Call Center Inc., LSL Corp., Sterling Medical and Pharmaceutical Corp., and the Philippine Fuhua Sterling Agricultural Technology Development Corp.

Lim’s companies are engaged in diversified businesses such as manufacturing of paper products, importation and distribution of school and office supplies, furniture, retailing, business process outsourcing, real estate development, and agriculture.

In an earlier interview, Lim shared that the secret behind his success in business came through with his hard work.

He shared that before the Sterling Paper Group became successful as it is now; it started with humble beginnings and experienced hardship in penetrating the market that was ruled by big multi-national companies.

Lim had invested on the greeting card manufacturing and designing business competing with bigger players such as Hallmark and they also ventured into notebooks and stationeries.

Now, after years of hard work, they are considered as one of the top suppliers of National Bookstore and they also have Expressions, their own independent school supply store.

Since greeting card business has become a “sun sink” industry, Sterling Paper Group of Companies has evolved into publishing of activity books and children’s books.

Lim said that situations such as these are inevitable so there is a need for entrepreneurs to really be able to find solutions and they must be able to evolve themselves with the current economic and business situations to survive.

“You must evolve yourself and learn to diversify your capability. You should not put your eggs in one basket,” he said.

And with the advancement of technology these days and the uptrend in laptops, Lim is predicting that in the long run, notebooks and papers will no longer be utilized.

However he stressed confidence that their company will survive this feat as they have started to find solutions such as joint venture projects that will materialize in the future.

Now aside from his paper manufacturing business, Lim had also engaged himself in agriculture, which he finds as a prospective venture especially with the country’s aim of ensuring food security.

Lim introduced hybrid rice in the country and helped developed hybrid rice technology with Yuan Long Ping, the father of hybrid rice from China. They developed a facility for hybrid rice through SL Agritech Corporation which now has tree seed farms in Laguna, Nueva Ecija and Occidental Mindoro that is collectively comprised of 1, 500 hectares.

These seed farms are producing SL-8, SL-7 and SL-9 hybrid rice variety that is not only distributed around the country but also in our other Asian neighbors such as in Bangladesh, Vietnam, Indonesia and China.

Right now Lim is also into the manufacturing and retailing rice under the Doña Maria brand that produces different variants such as Jasponica, cherry blossom, and brown rice. – Rhia de Pablo