Philosophical 11

Greetings and thanks for your comments which I will deal with in order.

*Shoes for PHP4500 ! You have to be joking* I have already explained that she has already sold 3 pairs without much trying but as she has said the real seller is when a customer touches and feels the shoes for those who have the ability to buy. How many is that? Sipalay has a population of 69000 and if there is a 1% interest that may well be significant enough. We also have close neighbouring villages who come into Sipalay on market day. I have already explained that she does not need a big stock. Maybe about 50 pairs and various sizes and colours can be ordered and delivered within 24 hours. Remember the nearest Mall is a 7 hr return journey. She has a captive market.

Rice. We only have one significant outlet here and she can compete easily with the prices. Supplies will be delivered so there are no problems there. Storage may be a problem....but we have a big house.

Handbags. Great idea. She hasn't gone into that market yet but has been concentrating on her gold jewelry.

Mail order. She currently uses LBC which are very good and has had no problems. She uses Philpost to deliver to the USA, Australia and the UK. Slow....but no problems.

Business principles. Yes, she had a problem with 14% and 5%. Fortunately she bounces everything off me and I can put her right. I will be the book keeper so I will be keeping an eye on what is selling or not and profitability. She will be the "upfront salesperson". I will be behind the scenes.

Pay day loans. Yes, I am aware of what they are and how they work. Although I am convinced the customers will be coming for a 5% loan and selling it on for 20%. I was asked about going into this last year. I refused.

Headaches and problems. Tell me a business that does not have that. I have had 25 years of it.

Business model. The secret is to be diverse so if it is copied such as shoes for example, then her forte as I have already found out is her diversity.

Good point about me having to make up shortfalls. But it will not happen. Yes, I can imagine her saying can we have 3k to pay the staff or whatever, but there will be a business fund which will pay for this. If that starts to dwindle then that will be an issue. But not my issue. It will be her money.

However, I cannot see her getting the start up money. But she has an option of getting a loan from the Mayors wife who is incredibly rich. And of course a friend of the family. She will loan for 10%. But she doesn't want to go down that route just yet. The reason being is that the Mayors wife has a premises to rent out and my gf may feel coerced into renting that. Problem is it is on the outskirts of town and she wants 10k pm rent. She will wait until the premises is rented out and then maybe go in for a loan.

Personally, I wish she will just stick to her on-line business but she is ambitious. I suspect she may start off with a much smaller loan and work up from there. After all, that's how FW Woolworth started. But of course...where are they now! She has my full support and thankfully she listens when she bounces off her ideas.

All for now

Regards

Philosophical 11

Mikek1,

Thanks for your encouraging words. Today she was still down on the disappointment of not getting a shop just yet. And I do sympathise with her. So, I told her of my ideas which are in the embryo stage until I get my financial settlement resolved. I mooted the idea of having a website designed for the needs of 10 million OFW's and another one for on-line jewelry. These would be I-phone friendly and utilizing pay pal. It went over her head a bit initialy but once explained she perked up quite a bit. No great capital outlay involved except for the website design and maintenance.

This comes off the back of two further disappointments she has just had. She found an on-line money lender which I had suspicions about. Applied anyway on her behalf and got a response this morning agreeing to the loan of 500k......but they want 11k to process before funds are transferred. Yeah right.

Second disappointment was due to her naivety. She ordered jewelry to the tune of 7k for a friend without waiting for a deposit. Her friend pulled out and now she is lumbered with the jewelry. Lesson learnt. Wouldn't have happened if I was behind the scenes. First time this has happened.

Anyway, she is as happy as Larry now but I did feel for her. I think maybe she told her friends and family of her idea for a shop and she lost face.

Next time I will regale you with how I met her etc as requested.

Regards

David Mashael

Hi

I think you have the wrong idea about the average Philippine OFW. Generally they are poorly paid, and are given very little, if any, access to internet by their employers. What about on their day off? I hear you ask, to which I reply what day off? Lot of them don't have an off day, even though their contract may state that they are entitled. They do not have iPhones and certainly don't have PayPal. Most of are lucky to even receive their salary in full even after several months waiting. Your LL as an ex OFW would be aware of the plight of most OFW's, although from what you have written on here, she was treated much better than is the norm. Not saying that there are no OFW's doing better than most, but they are very much in the minority. Any money that they are able to save is invariably sent home to support the family. Don't see many of them with the means or wherewithal to buy gold, jewellery or expensive shoes on layaway.

Wishing you all the best.

Philosophical 11

Hi David,

Thanks for your comment which I have taken on board. Yes, I agree that she appears to be have treated better than most. She certainly had an I-phone and so did her co-workers but as you say that does not necessarily mean all do. But many OFW's work in Europe, USA, Canada and Australia where their conditions are not so harsh. The website for OFW's will not include jewelry but for dried fish and other basic needs and no requirement for paypal. As I said, this is just an idea which needs to be developed. The jewelry site will be a different kettle of fish. Excuse pun!

Regards

Millhouse

Internet selling is not an easy business.... people think it's low cost to start up. Yes, the website is cheap (ish) to make, but making people visit it is certainly not cheap.

Pollyana

Reading all this with great interest

One thought i passing - if they are buying from Australia, Europe, etc and you are delivering to them in those countries - beware customs regulations! No dried fish will get into Australia, for instance, customs will impound and destroy it.

Stokkevn

In the UK I introduced quite a few OFWs to the fun of the antique auctions, where jewelry is normally sold for about 5-10% under gold scrap value. Many ended up buying in the UK and then sending/bringing their purchases back here. In Australia the secondhand jewelry is a lot higher price than scrap, Holland is the same or a little bit higher than scrap value.

Philosophical 11

Hi Millhouse,

You are correct. My business in the UK which I ran from home for nigh on 25 yrs was advertised on the internet on a website. I had the site designed and managed and after a short while was top of most rankings without any financial input. I had enough hits to keep me there with the correct keywords etc. Competition was fierce in my field of expertise but although I have not researched it I suspect a site for OFW's will not require much effort to get it top of the listings. But I need to look at profitability etc of the goods that will be advertised to see if it will be worthwhile.

Regards

Philosophical 11

Hi Pollyanna,

I agree with you. It needs to be researched. In the UK there are over 200,000 OFW's for instance. Dried fish is being imported there with no problems (yet) by an OFW friend who is doing very brisk business but only to her fb friends. One of my readers (Stokkevn?) told a funny story on these exalted pages not long ago about a shipment of dried fish. But yes, thanks...It needs to be researched in due course.

Regards

Pollyana

Mmm not sure about the UK. It can possibly be imported to Aus if in commercial quantities by a licensed importer, but just in small amounts by post - well, it would keep the customs guys amused Aus has so many banned things like that in the food line, must be a nightmare for private sellers to try and keep up with the rules.
Good luck with the business though, I shall watch from afar

Stokkevn

You are right, dried fish to be properly packed before sending to the UK ( or anywhere else ), postmen are not impressed with the smell following them around all morning. Certainly in the UK you can get most delicacies that most OFWs are after ( even Milkfish ) but dried fish is not one of them. You used to be able to buy the Indian dried fish called 'Bombay Duck' but that is longer available as it was from a fish on the CITES list of endangered animals. So I can imagine dried fish sales to the UK would be a brisk business ( must be less than 1Kg as that seems to be the customs limit ), via Ebay maybe???.

Gazza-d

One of the local Chinese supermarkets carries it in Cambridge but it's expensive.

quiltman

Here's just one UK shop selling filipino stuff - including some dried fish. At least you can compare pricing.
Filipino

and here's another;
Groceries Filipino Grocery Store

I suppose it depends on whether your prices for smaller quantities are competitive.

Raffin

I think the above links given by Quiltman show that Filipinos are just as competitive and fast moving in the online business environment as they are in the traditional one.

Philosophical 11

Greetings,

I was asked to share how I met my lovely lady. Here goes:

She came into my life about one year before I had decided to retire to the Philippines. I was still considering options. I was going through a bad period with marriage and a failing business. Guess its fair to say I was vulnerable. I was chatting on a Philippine dating site plus others to relieve boredom and the loneliness of an empty marriage.

She suddenly appeared on fb wanting to be friends. No idea who she was and certainly was not on the dating site. But I had a few Filipinas as fb friends and I accepted her as a friend. She was working in Kuwait as an OFW and had one year left before returning to the Philippines. We didn't chat or anything because as she later said she knew I was married. I wasn't particularly interested because I noticed she had many foreigner fb friends and was adding almost daily. They constituted about 10% of her fb friends. I guessed she was maybe a scammer. Her photo pics were what I would describe as alluring. A lot was her sat on bed in night clothes just looking pretty. She told me later that was because she was not permitted to use her I-phone during work and took selfies after work and shower. Hence nightclothes. She later said that if she got remarks from people with dirty minds she would delete them which I know she did. The pics could not be described as sexy but innocent selfies. She still loves her selfies which I guess is a pinay trait. She was also on Tango which I believe is a dating site and spent a lot of her time chatting on both fb, messenger and Tango. Even today, she chats incessantly on fb and messenger and I have seen her with 3 phones in her hand.....with her thumbs going 10 to the dozen. She is what I describe as a socialite for want of a different word.

Very little fb contact was made for many months except when I "liked" a pic she might sometimes come back on chat with a polite "Thanks for the like". No further chat took place. I noticed she was very polite on fb in her comments and I liked that. No attempts at scamming were made and I therefore thought she was not a scammer. But maybe looking for a husband?

My situation was now getting worse and began drinking alone at night. I was certainly chatting to pinays and others but never to her. I lost 13kg in 6 months through stress and worry and I had made my mind up to leave the marriage and retire to the Philippines. I had met a lady on the dating site. The story of this is on page 8 (I think) on this site. That fell through. But I had made my mind up to retire to the Philippines. I was going to leave in January 2015 and visit a few places and decide where to settle down.

Then we got chatting. I think I made the first overtures during one of my many binge drinking sessions late at night/early morning. This would be early morning in Kuwait when she was getting up to tend to her employers baby. I found I could chat to her and found some solace in that. She was wary because I was married but that was soon overcome. She learnt of my plans and asked if I could visit Sipalay in March 15 after I had been in the Philippines a few months looking around. Of course I agreed. I was also planning to meet someone else in Manila.

As January and departure date neared we got closer and her fb pages were filled with her thoughts and her feelings toward me. We were on Skype most days. She stopped the photsos on my request and Tango. Also stopped adding foreigner friends. She looked upon me as a decent man. She soon started pleading with me not to go to the Philippines until after she arrived in March last year. I eventually agreed.

But despite my assurances, she never believed I was coming. Right up to the time we met at Manila airport where she was waiting for me. Strange that.

Anyway...that's it in a large nutshell. She hated to leave Kuwait and had arrangements to go back if things didn't work out between us. She was nanny to a little boy and was there at birth. To all intents and purposes, she was his mother. She was treated as a member of family and baby Ali had lost his "mother".

You can see why I had that element of doubt and perhaps I still do. I trust her 99.9%. She is everything a pinay is renowned for....loving, caring and attentive. Not 100% perfect....but who is? And yes. She is high maintenance.

Regards