Betty & Kenneth Cobonpue : A Less Traveled Road To Success

Sometimes, inspiration is a matter of listening to your heart. For Betty Cobonpue, it came from listening with her soul. The founder of Interior Crafts of the Islands, Inc. (ICTI) candidly ascribes the runaway success of her furniture-making company to divine inspiration.

Some three decades ago, Betty Cobonpue returned to Cebu brimming with ideas. She was fresh from Interior and Industrial Design School in New York where part of the curriculum involved furniture design and construction. After a brief stint as an interior designer, she realized that designing furniture was what kept the fire in her belly ablaze.

"I discovered that here, furniture makers would make a sketch and then the carpenters would not really come out with the exact proportions. So I decided to design for a few furniture companies. But then I started seeing my designs copied all over by other companies as well! So I told my customers, if you want something exclusive then I’ll just have to do it myself," says Betty. Regrettably, it would not be the last time her designs would be illicitly cloned.

The venture started humbly in 1971 with just a few carpenters in Betty’s backyard, but she relished having total control over the finished product. The graceful furniture churned out from this backyard operation quickly drew raves, and Betty’s customer base steadily grew. By 1983, her furniture’s renown had spread well beyond Cebu.

Around this time, the Center for International Trade Expositions & Missions (citem) hired consultants from New York to sniff out Filipino factories good enough to be represented in the citem-sponsored fair. Betty Cobonpueís name came up and she was paid a visit by one of these consultants. Stage-managing her presentation, Betty showed her visitor what she imagined would go down well in the export markets–woodcarving. The consultant was not impressed.

For one accustomed to the yields of hair-splitting control, the setback was disconcerting. Betty’s self-doubt intensified when her husband expressed his opposition to signing up for the fair at all (the last asean fair they were involved with was a financial flop). Betty made a critical personal decision: she let go.

"At a certain point, I joined a Catholic Christian movement. I wanted to do what God wanted me to do–I was very conscious of that. I was sitting in my living room and I was asking God, ‘What do You want me to do?’ My husband doesn’t want me to join but what is Your will? If You really want me to join, then help me do something that is really very good," she prayed.

The answer came swiftly.

"Immediately after I said that prayer, I saw a Chinese barrel that I had bought from Hong Kong. The idea just came into my mind that I should put a sort of ribbon across that barrel. How else could I drape that ribbon if not with soft and pliable rattan? So I went upstairs and got a belt and I made it into a sash. I told my best carpenter to try and do it with rattan. I was standing beside him while he was working it and it came out very nice. I made a barrel of the same proportions using that process. The consultant came around the second time and saw what I had made and said, ‘I have never seen anything like this before’."

Betty Cobonpue had invented a technique of laminating fine rattan vines to form fluid sculptural lines for her furniture, a technique that would later earn her numerous awards. At that time, flat lamination was considered a relatively simple procedure, but lamination that emerges into a sculptural shape? It was unheard of. She applied for a patent and business boomed.

ICTI was now a major player exporting to the US, Europe, the Far and Middle East, Mexico and South America, but it was time for the company to move to the next level–and it would take a younger Cobonpue to make that move. Kenneth Cobonpue, Betty’s equally soft-spoken son, grew up with the smell of wood shavings and varnish, along with the assorted sounds of carpentry tools being expertly wielded. Two years into a business course at the University of the Philippines, Kenneth succumbed to what had long appeared to be his destiny–to help his mother run the family business. He quit UP and headed for New York, studying design for four years. After working in Florence, Italy for a year and taking further studies in furniture marketing and production in Germany on scholarship, Kenneth returned to Cebu in 1991.

"ICTI was doing mostly laminated rattan when I came back in 1991. In the first few years, I was still rehashing my mom’s designs. It was frustrating because it’s not really me. For the most part, our customer base then expected that kind of furniture from us. It was very hard to make a sudden change in look because you take a lot of risks. When we changed the look, a lot of people left us but then we got a new set of clientele, bigger and better. My mom also felt it was time to move on. In the industry, people always look to us for trends in design, something fresh, something new," Kenneth remembers.

More daring than his mother, Kenneth was principally influenced by the German Bauhaus movement, a 20th-century school of design that derived its aesthetic from techniques and materials employed in industrial fabrication and manufacture. Like a guild, it aimed to place all craftsmen under one roof, teaching them color theory, design, construction, even poetry and painting. The movement’s motto "form follows function" would just as easily describe Kenneth’s design philosophy.

"I also like very much the fusion of Asian craftsmanship with Western forms. The Filipino is a product of four different cultures so it is very easy for us to adapt to different markets. We have the best craftsmen–no one surpasses us. In weaving, patterns, in intricate work, in technical drawing, it’s as innate to us as singing," says Kenneth.

The ICTI factory in the heart of Cebu is a model of efficiency tidily sectioned into divisions like R&D, sample-making, weaving and finishing. From a peak of 300 workers, the factory now hums along on a lean crew of 120. Much of the reorganization was implemented on Kenneth’s initiative. "When I came back, I brought a lot of ideas from Germany and we invested a lot on new equipment. Before we were using homemade equipment."

Today, brainstorming for new design concepts occurs in collaborative sessions between mother and son filled with disagreement and, ultimately, compromise. "I’m more experimental. She’s very good in proportions and is very experienced," explains Kenneth. In a field where egos compel ideas to be adamantly defended, the Cobonpue method of finding middle ground is unconventional. The outcome–furniture that is elegant in its minimalism–confirms, however, that it certainly works.

Says Betty, "We work together, we put our ideas together, we correct each other, and we improve each other. There is always unity between us and it helps us make better designs. Disagreement doesn’t work in our lives. In the movement we are with, the charism is unity. We always live that unity. Even if I know I am right and he is wrong, someone has to give in. But we find that if one gives in, the other will also realize his mistake. It works out that way. Going back to our religious conviction, ‘Where two or more are gathered in My name, there I am in your midst.’ Whenever we have an idea, we believe it is not ours but Christ’s idea, who is in our midst."

God teaches us in different ways, she says. Some, like Betty and Kenneth Cobonpue, are simply more disposed to listening and learning.