Tesoro’s and the business of Filipino folk craft
MANILA, Philippines - Despite the global outlook of the Filipino, our cultural heritage remains deeply inlaid, carved, woven, or embroidered in our collective consciousness. Credit for this goes to a handful of people like Salud Tesoro, who, despite our fixation on all things foreign, went against the odds and built one of the most enduring edifices dedicated to Filipino folk craft.
“Tesoro’s is not just a store. We are the repository of the cultural heritage of the country,” explained Tesoro’s current CEO Beng Tesoro, the youngest daughter of its founding matriarch. “In our stores are the best the Filipinos can do and show the world.”
Now, with the country’s tourism boom and a renewed lease on aesthetic patriotism, Filipino handicraft stores are now standard fare in popular retail centers. But, despite our malls’ quick, consumption-driven commercial strategies, the freestanding Tesoro’s store remains intact, enjoying the same level of success it did when it was the only store of its kind 70 years ago.
“It didn’t happen overnight,” shared Tesoro, who has a Kellogg MBA. “It was something that we were able to do because we stuck to the values of our founder, my mom, which is ‘customer first, Filipino first, honesty, integrity, innovation, leadership,’” she enumerated.
The legacy of the past
In order to trace Tesoro’s success story, one must follow her lead in looking at the crux of national identity. Understanding that Filipino heritage is a confluence of different cultures, resources, histories, and habits, Salud Tesoro, in 1945, thought of building a shop where all of the Filipino’s finest — from all corners of the Philippines — could be found.
“She was very bright,” Beng shares. “Actually, she was going to be the valedictorian, had she not had to stop to run her family store. She gave up her dream, but she did not let that stop her. She said I’d be the best shopkeeper. I’d be the best shop owner.” At the time of our interview, Salud would have celebrated her 100th birthday had she been alive.
“She pioneered. She was the one who thought of the ‘all-under-one-roof’ concept shortly after the war. At that time, there were kitschy souvenirs, one-of-a-kind shops, singular product lines, or single province-focused,” Beng continues.
Other than Salud’s predilection for the finest Filipino handicrafts, be they finely woven piña fabrics detailed with exquisite callado embroidery, or the traditional T’boli T’nalak textile where no two were hand-dyed alike, the Tesoro matriarch also valued prompt customer satisfaction.
According to Lucy Josue, a saleswoman for the family-run Tesoro’s store along Makati’s Arnaiz Ave. for 40 years, Salud made sure that her customers could come for a barong fitting at 9 a.m. and could come back for it, sewn and finished, after lunch. It was this equal mix of product quality and service that made Tesoro’s evergreen.
“Our best customers have always been our fellow Filipinos,” Beng says. “In the 1960s or ‘70s, when tourists used to come by the busload to Manila, a lot of those shops that catered to them were gone because they relied on the tourist trade. But Tesoro’s has always been here for locals and foreigners alike. We tried to maintain what we stand for: a good collection, with good prices, and good service.”
Now at the helm of where her mother used to be, Beng admits to keeping Salud’s legacy alive. “It was her example, that nothing can take the place of persistence. There was a saying that, ‘Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.’ I saw this personally from my mom. And I’d like to believe I was cut from the same fabric, but I think I’m on its frayed edges.”
The labor of the present
Despite its considerably loyal patrons and roster of sure and steady suppliers, Tesoro’s is not a company that rests on its laurels. “This business is very difficult to run because you’re constantly looking for new sources, you have to make sure your price is competitive, you have to make sure your staff is well-trained. You can’t just hire new people every six months. But, because we have patient capital and the long-term view of a family business, we have lasted,” Beng observes.
The balancing act between maintaining a high-quality supply and a price-competitive product has been, for seven decades, the everyday workings at Tesoro’s. “First, we have an in-house design team that is constantly creating based on what’s felt as new, interesting, or even inventing ahead. And then, the hard part is, we have to collaborate with our suppliers. Let me tell you, it takes a long time before we get it right. But it happens.”
The results are indeed rewarding. From Tesoro’s exquisite windowpane oyster-shell tableware to woven-grass handbags silkscreened with vibrant tribal motifs, its vastly diverse products all hail from the finest sources all over the country. But now that the elder artisans are succumbing to old age, it has been a constant challenge for Tesoro’s to keep the heirloom crafts passing from generation to generation.
“Because we continue to buy from families that make heritage crafts, those that have been doing this for generations, and all with museum quality, they will all continue to create. Otherwise, they will stop. They will be in the BPO, or become OFWs. We have a role to play in preserving and nurturing our past trade, and it’s not easy,” Beng says. “You have to make it worth their while, honestly. The children of our suppliers are now architects, accountants, but they still know how to make it. So we try to make it worth their while; in other words, you have to pay them more. This is handcrafted, value it,” she added.
But of course, putting a premium on craftsmanship comes with a hefty price tag, and Beng has learned to adjust appropriately for Tesoro’s, to keep her patrons coming. “We come up with better-priced options. Let’s face it: this is a market economy. And the effect is, people will go where they get the best returns, and you have to support this.” So, from coming up with less expensive alternatives, such as jusi cotton with the same high-level callado needlework for barongs and ternos, to keeping the standard price of their merchandise even at their stalls in the airports, Tesoro’s has discovered the formula for longevity in the now-saturated industry of Philippine souvenirs.
“That’s why I’m not afraid of the competition, because the competition out there is not as focused on sustaining our crafts the way we are. And the reason for this is because we view this more than a business; we view this as something for the country.”
The lure of the future
Yet, while Tesoro’s may bank on its strengths as a traditional mom-and-pop shop, Beng also knows that it comes with a few threats. “Ninety percent of family-run businesses all over the world have closed by the third generation. But we plan to stay.”
That is why, in order to keep the business of Philippine folk craft aflame, Beng is keen on raising a new generation of enthusiasts.
With the help of her nephew, Rob Tesoro, Beng is now shifting Tesoro’s marketing to better suit the digital age with the store’s website and social media. Together with the rest of her family, she also shifted the store’s layout to be more inviting to a younger clientele. “They’re like, ‘Oh, that’s where my lola went, and my mom.’ Well, come over, you’ll be surprised. We have a café here, and you can even drink now, if you want,” she mentioned before waving for a glass of locally crafted white wine.
“We believe that, despite the noise from all the accessibility, the social media updates, the youth are looking for things to believe in, to be inspired by. And what changed is you have an empowered young generation,” says Beng, encouraged by a buoyant economy and rising spending power.
But, other than the quirky souvenir T-shirts and hipper merchandise now available at Tesoro’s, Beng still believes on sticking to their guns. “What hasn’t changed are the values that matter: persistence, hard work, industry, guts. My mom was persistent. She never let the downtimes discourage her.”
Tesoro observes that Filipinos want to know more about who they are, to ground their identity. So showing what the Filipino can do in the unique crafts of the Philippines resonates even more with the young today. “They’re proud to say ‘I’m Pinoy.’ We matter even more now, I think.”
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Tesoro’s Philippine Handicrafts has two flagship stores at 1016 A. Arnaiz Avenue, Makati City; and 1325 A. Mabini Street, Manila. Outlets are located in the Filipiniana section of The Landmark, the pre-departure areas of NAIA Terminal 1 and Terminal 3, the Mactan-Cebu International Airport, and the Diosdado Macapagal International Ariport in Clark, Pampanga.
