Dreams can come true … if you are a Natasha dealer
by Celia Pascual, SERDEF Media Bureau
The direct selling industry is highly competitive and dominated by multinationals (Think Avon, Amway, Tupperware). Natasha stands out in that it is home-grown and owned, 100 per cent, utilizing local materials and local craftsmanship.
Over the years since it began in 1993, Natasha has survived the tight competition, the Asian financial crisis and two historical upheavals and has grown steadily to reach people all over the country through a network of 42 distribution centers and 150,000 direct dealers all over the country from Aparri to Tawi-tawi.
Credit its sustainability and growth to the survival instincts and enterprising ability of is owner and CEO, Victoria “Vicky” Bello-Jardiolin.
Vicky obtained her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in business administration from the University of the Philippines, Diliman. In the 1980s, she taught marketing in the same school, where she also researched on entrepreneurship, small and medium industries, and cooperatives. She also worked as consultant at Sycip, Gorres & Velayo.
First business attempts
Vicky wasn’t an instant business success. She started many ventures that did not exactly flourish. On hindsight, she saw these experiences as critical preparation for her later, bigger and more successful projects.
She started a garment business in the late 1960s with a co-professor, but it didn’t last because of other priorities that took up her attention. Then she put up a snack mobile store called “Some Like it Hot” which made good enough profit, but was tedious to maintain, with the daily routine of loading the vans each morning. One day, one snack van caught fire.
When she went to Germany on a scholarship grant, Vicky asked her mother take over the snack mobile business.
When Confetti came, it poured
Back home in 1984, her sister Yolanda Bello Pajaro, who owns the upscale Via Venetto shoe company, offered Vicky half of the 200-sq m store space she got at the original Greenbelt Mall in Makati. “I know my business and I will teach it to you,” Yoly assured Vicky.
Vicky called the new shoe boutique Confetti – and it didn’t take long to be successful and expand to 15 branches.
Vicky knows very little about making shoes and does not try hard to understand the production side. What she did was to provide samples or pictures of shoes to Marikina shoemakers who would manufacture these for the Confetti boutiques.
Confetti has thus become the link between the customers and the manufacturers.
“We used man-made materials designed to be worn by class B people. We had to teach Marikina shoe makers to treat the materials with respect and make fashionable shoes out of them. Our ideas for shoes were drawn from fashion magazines, visits to trade fairs, and visits to fashionable boutiques in fashion centers abroad. So, Confetti shoes were trendy but unbelievably affordable.”
Though she stayed clear of production, Vicky brought into the business her international exposure and academic discipline of continuing product research, customer surveys, and marketing.
Natasha, the direct selling company, came after the success of Confetti, the boutique chain.
Entrepreneurship can be a lonely calling, Vicky muses. “Ikaw na ang bos, ikaw pa ang busabos.” But being en entrepreneur allows you to help others make a living.
This is true of Confetti. But doubly true for Natasha.
Natasha: for people with dreams
Encouraged by Confetti’s success, and wanting to cater to the C and D crowd, Vicky put up a new retail store she named Natasha. To get near her targeted customers, she located the store at a mall along a main thoroughfare. The expected crowds didn’t turn up, however. This was in 1994, the time of the power crisis of six to eight hours duration at a time. People were not going to the dimly lighted malls for fear of safety.
Vicky did the best out of a bad situation by converting Natasha into a wholesale company. If the buyers can't come to the shops, we will let the shops go to them, she must have thought. By wholesaling, it would sell to dealers who would then resell the products to their end users. At first, she gave a few dealers about a dozen pairs of shoes to start their respective business with. That was how Natasha’s networking marketing strategy began.
Vicky’s children pitched in to develop the networking system. Vicky would herself personally sell shoes to her friends and acquaintances. A son worked on developing the dealer network. A daughter took charge of selecting the merchandise, while a son took pictures of the products . The first Natasha catalogues were done by members of the family.
Soon, Natasha was selling, through its network of dealers, not just shoes but also T-shirts, pants, wallets and bags, and, lately, cosmetics and fragrances.
Natasha’s product marketing follows the classic direct selling scheme – basically the same being used by Tupperware, Amway, and Avon.
Natasha dealers go from person to person in commercial and residential areas with a catalogue of shoes, bags, clothes, accessories, and personal care products. The customer chooses from the catalogue and then pays on installment, locally known as “cry-cry.”
The dealer network has expanded rapidly as dealer recruits new dealers. But one does not have to wait to be recruited but rather can apply at any of the Natasha branches all over the country. (Click here for a partial directory of branches.)
The direct-selling strategy has become very convenient for those who have no time to shop or are not eligible for usual credit facilities, or are too far away from shopping malls, as in Batanes and Basilan.
Small wonder, Natasha’s first slogan was “Let shopping come to you.” When some OFWs became Natasha dealers in the foreign countries where they are deployed, the slogan became “Kung saan may Pinoy, may Natasha.”
Best of all for country’s economic well-being, the Natasha way of doing business unlocked income-earning opportunities for low-salary employees and under-employed people.
In the direct selling system, needless to say, dealers earn not only from what they sell but also from what their recruited dealers make.
Everyone dreams of becoming rich. The company promises to help make such dreams come true. But this transformation from dream to reality is rooted in sipag at tiyaga and will not come easily and certainly not to everyone who engages in direct selling Natasha -- or Avon, Amway, Tupperware, for that matter. If one is very patient and hardworking and very, very focused, there is little reason not to make in network selling.
Dreams have come true for some Natasha dealers, as the video testimonials of Natasha Top Dealers indicate: higher education for themselves and their children, houses, lots, vehicles, their own dealership business, a sense of fulfillment, and other Pinoy aspirations.
