Starting a Family Business

When Chu was in Cebu and I visited her in September 2004, we discussed ways to start a small business for the family. Mama Marina was already tending to a sari-sari shop Chu has built for her when the house was re-built. However the house was located away from the main road and with that away from the crowd; she was just able to make some money to keep herself busy. Papa Mario was driving the multi-cab and the earnings from plying the route from Mandaue City to Liloan has already paid for the installments. The earnings were extras to the family income on top of the allowance I gave to Chu twice every month. Brother Mark was staying with the family and running errands and was not contributing financially. With Chu’s two children already in high school, Mark’s three year old kid, and the house bills, the family was not self sustainable.
Chu has mentioned that many Cebuanos has started buying up land as the real estate price was at an all time low – 500 pesos per sq m in outlying area. She has been approached by the neighbor Carolina who has offered her plot of land in Paknaan for sale. Another neighbor offered her 100 sq m plot next to our house at 2500 pesos/sq m. That would have cost us eight thousand dollars. If we later would like to buy the whole plot of 200 sq m we could buy the remaining 100 sq m at 2000 pesos/sq m. The total investment would be closed to fourteen thousand dollars.
We talked about the offers every night and I queried if land at this location would really appreciate overtime. Fourteen thousands dollars is not much where I come from and could not even buy me a car COE in Singapore and yet we could become land owners of a 200 sq m plot with that sum. It was really a mouth watering offer. Even if we threw in another fifty thousand dollars and built ourselves a double level bungalow like the ones you see along Serangoon Gardens, it would have been a damn cheap investment. For me, indeed a dream comes true.
But then who needs a big house and lot when we have no sustainable income. After many ponderings we decided to put our money to better use.
Chu’s friend Ginging who worked at the airport as a taxi canvasser has suggested to Chu to try for an airport taxi since the airport taxi franchise was now opened for bidding and if we are interested she could put in some good words to the franchisor. We were unfortunate and disappointed to learn later that the franchisor has elevated the requirement that self-own taxi have to be new and Japan imported and that would put us in a disadvantaged position compared with existing Korean taxi. The pay back time would be longer and financially not sound. We backed out of the plan.
Chu made more inquiries and learned that V-hire franchise for passenger vans was also available to ply from SM city to other towns along the North and South Highway. We calculated that for a given the number of trips per day with a minimum number of passengers we could break even within a year. We therefore made the decision to purchase a second hand Toyota HiAce 3 liter combo van and appointed Papa Mario as the bus captain.



Consequently Mark was asked to drive the multi-cab which turned him immediately into an income earner killing two birds with one throw.
Did the investment turns out well? We were to find out later to our bitter disappointment that first we have to overcome state bureaucracy and then local syndication before you could even started exercising the franchise ship. It took us four wasted-income months and still we are waiting for the answer. What a big let down!