The Predicament of Success

They are already the new retail royalty. At breakneck speed, they are also becoming among the country’s most influential restaurateurs. Barring disaster, combined sales of their Astoria Group of Companies–the umbrella group comprising fashion outlets, lifestyle stores, eyewear kiosks, and restaurants–will approach the one billion-peso mark in the foreseeable future. But are the knives being sharpened to cut short Ricco and Tina Ocampo’s stratospheric ascent?

He was born in San Fernando, Pampanga, into a prosperous family. Summers were no vacation for Ricco Ocampo, who either worked under the family-owned bank’s New Accounts department for his father or sold bicycles in their chain of appliance stores for his mother. In college, Ricco did something unexpected–he dropped out.

The story has since become part of the Ricco Ocampo lore. With an initial capital outlay of P3,000, he earned his first million selling handpainted shirts to Cinderella in 1983. Success begot success, and Ricco was soon on a roll. E. Aguilar Cruz, illustrious Renaissance man, accepted Ricco into his inner circle of tastemakers and thinkers. Fashion houses courted the young entrepreneur and he became Creative Director and flamboyant partner of Sari-Sari. From there, he executed among his slickest moves yet.

Tina Maristela–tall, posh, daughter of a military man, and an obsessive devotee of the structured life–was one of the 1980s’ top models. Inevitably, she received an invitation from Ricco to model for Sari-Sari. Proud of the Spanish bloodlines she asserts were responsible for the two hallmarks of her modeling career–discipline and profes-sionalism–she initially turned him down; she was simply overbooked. But Ricco was unrelenting and, by now, entirely smitten.

He resorted to charac-teristically unorthodox methods to woo her. At one point, he designed t-shirts with her patrician face, freckles and all, handpainted at the front. Tina Maristela eventually did become a Sari-Sari model. In fact, she soon became Tina Maristela-Ocampo.

They made an odd couple. When in stilettos, she towered more than half a foot over him. She required order every waking minute while he seemed to thrive amid the anarchy of his gut feelings. She willingly stayed in the office until midnight doing the paperwork; he forgets to put the toothpaste cap back on. "The first three years after getting married was a real disaster. Ricco is a free spirit. He doesn’t like organization, basically. He just likes to go with the flow. Because he has so much energy, he forgets details," says Tina.

The usual model-bags-rich husband suspicions dogged her and few believed it was a marriage created out of love. What many don’t realize is that, at the start, it was the supermodel who had the money. Among the first places he brought her for a date was Burger Machine, Manila’s definitive greasy spoon. He even borrowed some cash from her to help purchase a car.

Ricco surprised the industry by leaving Sari-Sari, a bitter parting that has fueled much speculation. He does not deny that the split, which left him with the upscale Mix, was not amicable. "I spent quite a number of years in a company and I was just aching to be on my own, aching to do what my wife felt was good for the business. We were just bursting to go out on our own," he says today.

Some opined that Tina had been the disruptive force within the Sari-Sari group, much like Yoko Ono with the Beatles. If Ricco appeared feckless back then for listening to his wife, hindsight has proven the conjugal decision to be spectacularly correct. Ricco, however, has admitted in the past that, at the time, "I was at the lowest point in my life. My confidence was shattered and I had no money."

Supported by a wife that was at least his equal in terms of ambition, Ricco nursed Mix to sales of P300 million from seven stores. Disastrously, the peso’s depre-ciation against the dollar forced him to close six of its stores, whose luxury brands were mostly imported. The subsequent turn-around in their fortunes was swift and dramatic.

In 1996, Ricco took out a P2.5-million loan from a bank using his Green Meadows home as collateral. The loan, which he claims is his sole business borrowing, was used to fund the 80 stores he needed to open in the first year of operations to comply with i2i’s master franchise contract. He was convinced the funky, affordable, and uniquely packaged eyewear he first chanced upon in New York would capture the fashion conscious but shallow pocketed market. He was spot on.

i2i was a phenomenon that allowed the Ocampos to expand and diversify their businesses–Ricco has claimed that half of all earnings are ploughed back into their ventures. Four years ago, they decided to franchise i2i and Anonymous, a hugely successful lifestyle store.

"We franchised both Anonymous and i2i at around the same time," says Ricco. "It makes sense to franchise especially stores outside Manila. It gives us more leeway to allow people to build up their customers in special areas like Cebu, Davao, and Iloilo. I think they would be much more capable of knowing who their customers are."