A woven pandan accent chair by Reeds and Weeds
Our company, Reeds & Weeds, Inc. is a community-based handicraft-manufacturing enterprise in Bacolod City. We subcontract most of our production of basket ware (pyrex holders, trays, coasters, hot mats, canisters, place mats, etc.) to hundreds of homeworkers, mostly women, in practically all towns of Negros Occidental.
Most of our products are basically woven pandan leaves, accessorized with ceramic and terracota handles and beads. Lately, we have also gone into furniture making on a limited scale using the same fiber.
The supply of ceramic parts have been especially problematic.to us. The first ceramic firm that supplied the parts did not always deliver in time, prompting us to look for another supplier. After a while, we found that our first supplier had become our direct competitor, producing its own line of pandan baskets with ceramic handles. That was a low point in the history of Reeds and Weeds. This competitor was undercutting prices by 30 per cent. As a result, we lost some of our biggest customers.
Of course, we were moved to fight back. We took a close look at our operations, resolving to be more cost-efficient.
I attended more business management seminars. In one of these training programs, I was taught to zero in on the products that yield the most profit. Following that counsel, I took out the “trivial few” and retained and paid more attention to the “vital few” in my product lines.
My husband, Norman, also helped boost productivity. He had been making himself useful fabricating little jigs and tools that have cut down production time and costs. But at that critical period, he came up with his most important innovation, thus far: He did away with the coconut midrib base of the baskets and used wire instead. That made the product more stable, facilitating the weaving in a major way.
With all these efforts, our company cut down costs by 20 per cent. Although that was not enough to match the competitor’s prices, many of our customers who left came back. It is probably because they preferred our quality and didn’t mind paying slightly higher for it.
Thank God for competitors. If not for them, we wouldn’t have tried as much to do better.
From:
Sylvia “Gigi” Mondenedo Campos
Owner, Reeds and Weeds
Bacolod City