Opening Pinoy trade links in Atlanta

Filipinos are all over the world, either working, sailing the high seas in ships or cruise liners, or married with families. They miss home and so will try to connect in any which way from texting to buying food products creating a worldwide consumer base.

I recently visited Atlanta, Georgia where I spoke in two APEC panels on the topic of the global value chain. My speech was from the perspective of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SME) to share insights into how SMEs and women-owned business could be linked into multi-national global supply chains. The meeting was to bring recommendations for policies that ministers of the 21 APEC economies could craft and pass and bring programs into action.

I had two platforms to speak about, which I called “G & G” initials for “green and gender,” presenting sustainability with ECHOstore as a case study and that of gender with our GREAT Women platform and brand in both the Philippines and the coming ASEAN grouping. The whole conference highlighted the need for SMEs to think global and plug into bigger supply chains, and to study the hurdles small companies have that limit their participation. SMEs, which comprise more than 90 percent of enterprises across all economies in the Asia Pacific Region, however, have not been able to capitalize on this opportunity.

My key learning I took from this conference was that technology, the great equalizer, needs to be central to any business supply chain — from sourcing, distribution, logistics, manufacturing, return capabilities, quality control and marketing, sales and communications. Technology is slowly making “local” obsolete. The second word I took home was “innovation” that everyone was trying to create ways and means to solve the hurdles and limitations to help SMEs get into the international trading ground.

After the conference, the Department of Trade and Industry’s Washington-based trade attache Maria Roseni “Nini” Alvero had set a whole day of meetings for some Filipino SMEs who were all together in an outbound selling mission to Atlanta. The SMEs had products from coconuts, preserves, sauces, bottled fish and our beloved bagoong. The field trip was to see Asian groceries that carry Filipino products in Atlanta and the Georgia area. I joined them for the ride as a kibitzer.

Interestingly, one always thinks that Filipinos in the US are concentrated in numbers in the West Coast. But the slower southern states like Georgia, Tennessee and South Carolina have their Asian migrant population rising. The field trip highlighted how important the value chain is and that we just cannot think of “local” anymore. All products are global especially since our Filipino kababayans are all over the world.

Our volunteer guides were Mae Pascual, head of the Philam Atlanta Chamber of Commerce and the Makabayan Foundation, and our “driver” finance consultant Ken Oroseo. I was amazed how truly warm our overseas kababayans were and the field trip was made joyful by their presence.

We visited Martin Gustino’s Manila Mart that has steadfastly been in business for 12 years now. Martin’s goal: to be the biggest seller of Filipino products in the southern US. He shared how sometimes he gets nervous when Filipino families drive from three- to four-hour distances in groups of families caravan-type to descend upon his grocery to buy food. The result would be empty shelves with Martin scrambling to re-order stocks in a rush. The other larger grocery owned by Koreans had a whole aisle of Filipino food while the Indian supermarket was already planning to come to Manila to begin its own sourcing. Filipinos abroad miss home as we now see the rising export of Filipino food products.

Nini echoed the similar story in Alaska when tankers or cruise liners would dock and Asian grocery shelves carrying Filipino food products be bought out. The Filipino crew would buy everything in bulk to stock in their months out in sea.

And with such demand, our local manufacturers push to supply products in such groceries around the world.

Small companies alone cannot sustain or flourish in the international trading space. And this is why government holding them hand in hand can make the collaboration fruitful.