|
JAIME
Acosta always gets on women’s skins: he’s built a
business around it.
The
fortysomething Acosta, who heads the company that makes
and markets the soap under the brand name New Placenta,
credits success to his audacity.
That
showed eight years ago, when he asked a taxi driver on
the way to the Mactan Airport in Cebu to slow down on a
busy bridge so he can mumble a promise: “I’ll conquer
your market one day.”
Nearly
eight years later, the crowded Cebu beauty-product
market has led him to exports.
“We’re
going global slowly,” Acosta said, citing Hong Kong and
Japan as a growing sales and marketing network for his
company Psalmstre Enterprises Inc.
Psalmstre, a word play on a biblical verse, is
undertaking such expansion after establishing branches
in six major Philippine cities outside Metro Manila and
Cebu and two main offices in each of the two cities.
From
just several less-popular drugstores in Mandaue City,
Cebu, Psalmstre now has 21 outlets that display and sell
not only skin-whitening soap but also day cream,
hand-and-body lotions, and facial toners. Acosta has
also opened a spa beside Psalmstre’s Manila
headquarters.
Two
years ago, he also incorporated Placenta Formula
Cosmetics Co. Inc., a manufacturing plant with a capital
stock of P500,000.
Indeed,
Acosta has come a long way from that week after
Christmas in 1999, when he risked his life savings of
P30,000 and walked the streets of Mandaue City.
“At
least, now I can say I’m not a liability anymore to the
government,” Acosta said on the fifth floor of his
company’s main office in Manila.
He
asserts that through the taxes he pays the government
and by providing employment to nearly 1,000 Filipinos,
“entrepreneurs like me are considered assets of our
country.”
ENTREPRENEURSHIP wasn’t on Acosta’s mind when he was in
college gunning for a degree in mass communication.
He says
he began tinkering with the idea of going into business
after earning from direct selling and network marketing
of powdered tea for two years.
With
just a traveling bag, Acosta flew to Cebu and began
selling bars of skin-whitening soap alongside the tea.
The soap
that time was unbranded; manufactured based on a formula
that he claims German scientist Dietmar J. Rummel
formulated. Rummel is now Psalmstre’s consultant.
“I went
to almost every retail outlet and drugstore that was
open during that time—it was near New Year, the new
millennium—and just pitched the products to anyone
minding the store,” Acosta said.
While
fireworks popped outside the streets and brightened
Cebu’s skyline, Acosta said he began to have misgivings
about his decision. “I couldn’t sleep. I was alone,
without television,” Acosta said. So he grabbed his
Bible to read.
“I
flipped open a page at random and arrived at Psalms. I
knew then I can only move forward,” he said.
With his
renewed faith, Acosta said he continued walking the
streets of Mandaue City and went back to Manila to get
fresh supplies and process the incorporation of
Psalmstre.
He
partnered with a businessman to manufacture the bars of
soap. Those bars got him sued by his business partner.
While he
can’t discuss the details of the case, Acosta said it
was a test of fate and faith. “I got angry and the
angrier I got, the more tired I became,” Acosta said.
But
every time he looks out his car window and sees people
living on the road to his plant in Taytay, Rizal, Acosta
said all his anger and fatigue dissipates.
“I
recall my experience in Mandaue when I was walking the
streets under the sun,” he said.
ACOSTA’S
audacity has helped him grow his business and steer it
while still engaged in a legal case.
First,
he tapped women in show business—the longest-running is
Melanie Marquez—to endorse his products. That boosted
sales by 200 percent, Acosta said.
Currently, he said Psalmstre is selling an average of
4,000 boxes a month. Each box contains 100 rectangular
bars of soap.
Some
1,500 boxes stacked neatly in a row stare at him at
Psalmstre’s warehouse today because of the legal battle
on who owns the brand name Placenta marked on each
carton of soap. “It all boiled down to the name, to the
brand and the box,” Acosta said.
He now
has to put white strips of stickers on to prove that it
was really made by Psalmstre subsidiary Placenta
Formula.
And
because his supplier was giving him orange-colored soap,
he has to craft a new marketing scheme. “Consumers
wanted the original white-colored soap. And we have
thousands of orange-colored ones in our warehouse,” he
said.
Acosta
is still dipping into his experience in public relations
to cut this batch from his inventory.
Before,
Acosta said, he can sit back after putting a celebrity’s
face on the box because his products move in the market.
“Now,
consumers will complain if they find an orange, not
white, soap when they open the box, even though the soap
has the same ingredients or formula,” he explained.
Indeed,
aside from the legal case, Acosta is still busy
strategizing to meet his target 20-percent share of the
beauty-product market.
Alicia
Ilaga of the agriculture department’s biotechnology
program estimates the value of the global “natural”
cosmetics market alone at $10 billion and growing 20
percent annually.
“The
market is big and won’t shrink, as long as Filipino
women continue to believe that having a whiter, smooth
skin is being beautiful,” Acosta said.
His
target market composed of women aged 25 to 29 is around
3 million of a total 37.9 million, according to the
latest National Statistics Office data. Add the 30-to-39
age bracket, and his target market hits 8.2 million.
According to its latest report, AC Nielsen cited that
the Philippine market is the fourth-largest in the
region in terms of skin-care lightening products. The
country just trails China, Hong Kong and Taiwan in the
report released last year.
Of
respondents in 10 countries the marketing firm surveyed,
Filipinos led China, Hong Kong and five other countries
in saying if money was no object, they would spend more
on skin lightening.
“The
Nielsen survey found that people invest in personal
grooming for many reasons, but mostly they do it for
their own sense of well-being,” said the ACNielsen
report on health, beauty and personal grooming.
“This
was particularly the case for 73 percent of women and
for people aged 21 to 29,” it added.
It seems
Acosta is right on the target. |
