You were a foreign service graduate, cum laude. Why did you take a different career path?
I graduated from college at 20 years old. I really wanted to take the Foreign Service Officers exams immediately after, but the rule then was that the candidate must be at least 21 years old. I had to wait another year.

Meanwhile, I was offered a job immediately after graduation. I took the job as international officer at the Kabataang Barangay, a Philippine semi non-government organisation geared towards promoting youth leadership and grooming future leaders. I really enjoyed the job and the responsibilities that went with it.

Before I knew it, I was already three years into the job and I didn’t miss the opportunity to work in the foreign service corps anymore. Since then all my professional life has been dedicated to working for not-for-profit organisations, particularly trade or business organisations. I find that working with this kind of volunteer organisations is more enriching because what we do can help and affect the lives of many people, if not a whole sector.

You have a long, illustrious career (eight years with the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry and 23 years so far with the Philippine Retailers Association [PRA]) yet you chose to complete a course with the Philippine Council of Associations and Association Executives (PCAAE) to become a Certified Professional Association Executive (CPAE). Was that necessary?
Association management is not yet a recognised profession in the Philippines. Very few volunteer trade organisations have full-time professional staff. Often, the association secretariat is seen as performing only secretarial functions – not a management and leadership role which I have in my present job.

One of my long-time advocacies is to help professionalise the association management function and turn it into a fulfilling career. I am very fortunate that my board recognises my role in the association, and their trust encourages me to accomplish more. But I’m afraid many other association executives like me are still struggling for that recognition.
The CPAE is the badge that will help elevate association management into a professional career and I wanted to be an example of that to the rest of the association community.

You’re PCAAE’s first Association Executive of the Year for your transformational leadership. How did you transform PRA from what it was 23 years ago?
I did not do it single-handedly. The fact that my board had given me the trust and confidence to do what I do best – i.e. manage the association – was a critical impetus that helped me accomplish more for my association.

I am honoured that what I have accomplished at PRA can be deemed as “transformational”. But I think the transformational part would be my succeeding to win my board’s trust and confidence in my capabilities that they let me expand my horizons in terms of serving our members and coming up with various programmes to help our members grow and by extension, promote our industry.

A person cannot improve himself if he has only himself to benchmark on. While retail is generally a domestic trade, I wanted to help our members benchmark against the more advanced countries in retail, so we initiated an International Study Tour to Tokyo, Japan through the help of our counterpart, the Japan Retail Association.

Japan’s retail industry is more advanced in many ways, especially in technology. But at the same time, it still has a dominant traditional trade, e.g. mom and pop stores – very much like ours. It was interesting to study and observe both sides of the retail trade in Japan.

At the same time, we know that retail-specific programmes are not readily accessible, especially to retailers in the provinces. For this we launched our Regional Retail Excellence Roadshow seminars. SME retailers in the provinces will not come to Manila to attend training programmes. So, if David cannot go to the mountain, let the mountain go to David.

In cooperation with the Department of Trade and Industry in the regions as well as the Department of Tourism, we conducted seminars on store operations, loss prevention and customer experience all over the country. We were able to help over 2,000 SME retailers. This project also won for the PRA the PCAAE Industry Development Award in 2015.

PRA is also self-sustaining. How did you do it?
I think an overriding issue that must be pointed out is that without funds, no organisation can survive and thrive. Membership fees cannot sustain a trade organisation’s projects and operations. More often than not, payment of dues  cannot be assured at 100 per cent. We need to have other sources of income to sustain the organisation.

We have made practically all our programmes self-sustaining through sponsorships and we have been able to raise sponsorships for our annual National Retailers Conference and Expo (NRCE) – our bread and butter – which helped sustain our operations and various programmes and advocacies.

Future-proofing Retail was the theme of NRCE 2017. What does it mean?
This came about because of the various challenges facing brick-and-mortar stores which are our members; challenges such as (the growing reach of) Amazon and the onslaught of online retailing. We needed to help them find ways to cope and compete.

The NRCE programme covered topics that addressed these concerns. It is our mission to help our members in any way we can, either through educational and informative programmes or by connecting them with other organisations and businesses that can help them.

What are the other challenges and opportunities facing PRA members?
Before the year 2000, the Philippine retail industry was closed to foreign investors. In fact, we fought attempts to open up the industry to foreigners for five years, from 1995 to 2000. (At the end) then-president Joseph Estrada signed into law the Retail Trade Liberalization Act (RA 8762).

During those five years, my board was at the forefront of the battle, from congressional hearings to marching the streets to make our voices heard.

Although the battle was lost, we did not lose the war altogether. Through the PRA’s efforts, we were able to at least ensure that small- and medium-sized retailers have a level playing field. Hence, the law included safeguards as well as higher investment requirements from foreign retailers, especially if they are coming in at 100 per cent ownership.

Fast forward to today, there are hundreds of foreign brands in the Philippines, mostly on franchising or joint venture arrangements. In recent years, big foreign brands like H&M have opened in the Philippines at 100 per cent ownership. IKEA is scheduled to open in three years time. These developments are good for the customers but challenging for local retailers who now have to compete for shoppers as well as retail locations.

E-commerce or online retailing is another growing challenge for brick-and-mortar stores. While it is not e-commerce per se that is the challenge, it is the global marketplace that is threatening. Amazon and Alibaba – with their huge inventory and efficient supply chain and payment systems – hang like a sword of Damocles over the heads of mainstream retailers. So what to do? Philippine retailers have to innovate and adopt to the new technologies that will make them competitive vis-à-vis large foreign marketplaces.

On the part of PRA, we will come up with new programmes that will help them along this line; be the bridge to connect them to suppliers and technologies that can help them meet the challenges head on and succeed.

Can PRA member events be part of the solution?
As their trade organisation, members look up to us for news, updates on the latest trends and developments in retailing around the world. Through our annual convention, we are able to bring in knowledgeable speakers and experts who can share their expertise and experiences in addressing these concerns. Rather than look for these information on their own, they know that PRA will be at the forefront of getting these information.

Through our regional connection in the Federation of Asia Pacific Retailers Associations (FAPRA), composed of 18 member economies in Asia-Pacific, we are able to organise study tours and missions that can help them learn and experience retailing in other countries.
Through our Retail Excellence Seminars, we help train their people in various aspects of retailing. Through our Job Fairs we are able to help them source their manpower requirements.

I came up with PRA’s motto: our only business is helping your business grow. With our programme and advocacies, we are able to do that.

What are the other things PRA is doing to advance itself and members?
My advocacy is to help professionalizs the secretariat and to champion association management into a career.

To actualise this, I encourage all my staff to take the CPAE programme. This year, three more staff are graduating as a CPAE.

At the same time, we are proud to report that since its inception in the PCAAE last year, the Board Member of the Year honor has been won twice in a row by PRA – vice chairman Alegria Limjoco in 2016 and chairman Lorenzo Formoso in 2017.

All in all, we are proud that we are one of the very few trade organisations in the Philippines to be led and managed by recognised association leaders and certified professional staff. This will reflect well with our members and the retail community here and abroad.

How else is PRA planning to go global apart from its international study tours and international business missions?  
We are also on the lookout for new markets to introduce to our members as potential areas for expansion abroad. Hence this year, we did a Retail Business Mission to Yangon, Myanmar where our counterpart, the Myanmar Retailers Association, briefed our delegates on the Myanmar retail sector and toured us around various malls and retail locations.
We have been invited to do a Retail Business Mission to Sri Lanka in 2018.

We are proud of our network in the Federation of Asia Pacific Retailers Associations (FAPRA) because they are the ones who paved the way for these international programmes.

Again, we wanted to spread our wings globally and the Federation of International Retail Association Executives (FIRAE) is composed of the recognised retail associations in the US and Europe. It was a natural next step and with our membership in the FIRAE, PRA has come full circle in terms of expansion.

PRA won the bid to host the Asia Pacific Retailers Convention and Exhibition (APRCE) in 2015. What lessons did you learn from that?
It took the Philippines 22 years to bring APRCE back to Manila. This biennial event is won through competitive bidding. The last time the Philippines hosted it was in 1993 – at the height of full-day blackouts in the Philippines. Yet the PRA (I wasn’t in the PRA yet, having joined in 1994) was able to stage a highly successful APRCE in Manila, which eventually won the Department of Tourism’s Kalakbay Award for Event of the Year. Naturally, it was a tough act to follow.

The bid to host APRCE is like bidding for the Olympics. We had to convince FAPRA members that the Philippines was the best bet to host it from various angles – the prospects of the retail sector, tourism, ease and accessibility of flights, hotels, and programmes, etc.
It took PRA two years to prepare for the 2015 edition, and the FAPRA Heads of Delegations representing the other 17 members visited the host country the year before to check on our preparations.

Organising our annual conferences gave us enough experience to deliver a regional event. The only difference was the number of attendees and the many nationalities and cultures we had to cater to. The scope was bigger, hence more challenging.

That we had the support of our Department of Tourism and the Tourism Promotions Board greatly helped in facilitating our coordination with the various government agencies concerned, from airport arrangements to security and visa coordination.

Another challenge for PRA then was how to take APRCE 2015 a notch higher than APRCE 1993. The answer was in the welcome and gala dinners where we had more leeway to do extraordinary things. We left no stone unturned to stage a grand production number that wowed the delegates and made them see why “It’s More Fun in the Philippines” (the destination’s marketing slogan).

One of the biggest challenges we had was bringing more than 2,000 foreign delegates in more than 40 buses from the SMX Convention Center to another venue, the Marriot Grand Ballroom, which was about eight kilometres away. Adding to the stress was the heavy rush hour traffic in Manila. To do this, we sought the help of our Philippine National Police that deployed escorts for all the buses to safely and speedily bring them to the venue and back to their respective hotels.

Any upcoming international conferences that PRA is bidding for and hosting?
This year we are focusing on our annual NRCE. While it is a local event, we are planning to invite more foreign speakers as well as invite international attendees, particularly from our regional counterparts. This is where our regional and global connections come into play.

This article was first published in TTGassociations April 2018, a sister publication of TTGmice