The entrepreneur in me

THREE years ago, I and four other friends decided to do something stupid: we put up a bookshop. It's called Bound Bookshop, a small store tucked away somewhere near Tomas Morato Avenue in Quezon City. I say stupid because we were all journalists, which is to say we were clueless about running a business (except for one of us, who runs a successful printing shop). I now suspect that we - myself, May Rodriguez, Inday Espina-Varona, Weng Paraan and Bernadette Sembrano (who bowed out of the venture early this year) - put up Bound because we were all excited about the idea of having a bookshop, a “huge intellectual playground,” as the defunct SME Insight magazine called it. Three years into this venture, Bound has not made us rich. In fact, there were times when - mainly because, I'd like to think, of the overall sorry state of the Philippine economy (books are still considered a luxury in this country) - we thought of closing down the shop. But it is still there, surviving. Bound's survival hinges mainly on the fact that it has a unique business model. Most of our titles - current events, politics, literary stuff, sex and erotica, religious and self-help, etc. - come from journalist friends, suking patrons and strangers who bring their books to the store and consign them. We share the profit. As such, we don't spend much on the inventory. It also helps that we share the rent and utility bills with the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines, which holds office upstairs. (To consign your books, contact Bound through its website.) These days, we have been busy sprucing up the store, thinking of ways to better market and promote it (which partly explains this post-cum-shameless plug). Personally, the effort to keep the store alive and make it profitable has been very instructive. Among the entrepreneurship lessons learned so far:

It is okay to put up a business on a whim or to feed your personal interests. (A business, after all, should be something that you are particularly interested in and have fun doing.) But you have to be able to snap out of your romanticized view of the business and be willing to do some hands-on, hard and dirty work. If you can't, you have to be willing to cut your losses and drop the whole thing before it bleeds you dry. Before you think big, think small first. For instance, personally giving out flyers to strangers on the streets may be small-time to many people but it still one of the most effective ways to promote your business. Engage in some guerrilla marketing. Apart from flyers, use cheap tarpaulin printing (25 pesos per foot) to create posters or banners. (The wall of our house in Quezon City is adorned with tarp banners advertising the store. Just make sure you slash or tear the tarps in places so these don't end up as rain covers of tricycle drivers.) Get important feedback from customers. Ask them where did they learn of your business. This will give you a more or less accurate and scientific idea of the marketing and promotions that you do and which of them actually draw in customers. Go online to find answers for many of your everyday problems. For instance, we found free book inventory software on the Internet that has made things easier for us. There's Homebase, a free book managing software from Abe Books, one of the US's largest online booksellers. There's also Bookhound by Biblio.com, a free open-source inventory system. Exploit the amazing power of social networking sites to spread the word about your business. Bound is on Friendster, Multiply, etc. We are also using Shelfari and Library Thing, which can showcase our catalog in blogs and other sites. Consider advertising in online publications. Bound does (on, among others, Click Manila, a free online classified and job posting site, and PinoyPress.) It may seem daunting at first but consider accepting online orders. Usually, this entails processing credit cards but don't be intimidated by that prospect. Offer online orders (and perhaps shipping) and have your clients pay you via the usual bank deposit, money transfers such as Western Union, and those wondrous invention by the mobile phone companies - G-Cash (by Globe) and Smart Money (by Smart). Finally, you should be at the place of your business as often and as regularly as possible. It is important to delegate, to be sure, but nothing beats being in the center of it all. At the very least, it provides you some valuable insight into certain things, such as “Is this freezing air-conditioning temperature really that necessary - and cost-effective? Why is this book here and not there? Will people buy Time magazine when its cover the past three issues all look the same? I've been in the store for most of the day the past two weeks and I'm actually enjoying it -- I must be doing the right thing.”

Carlos H. Conde is a journalist based in Manila.