When Cottage Industries Become Big-Time Businesses

As a fan of Filipino pastries -- I'm not too surprised to find out that some of the cottage industries have become a nationwide name. How is that possible? Well, there's such a thing as careful development or that there's opportunities in almost every turn. The same can be true for cottage industry businessmen who once started out small and there should be the lesson for the love of humble beginnings.

Here's some examples of cottage industries that became big-time businesses!

Picture from Our Awesome Planet

The chocolate queen Raquel Choa of Chocolate Cottage herself started out really poor. She married to Alfred Choa when she was still 16 and had eight children with him. She learned the art of tablea from her grandmother during the communist conflict in Balamban, Cebu. Today, she's now operating her home-made quality tablea where she employs both modern and ancient methods. It's fun to see her teach people how to crush tablea using a mortar then employing modern methods to finish her products.

Picture from Vulcan Post

The nationwide Julie's Bakeshop started out as a simple cottage industry that became a nationwide business. Now, you may see them at the malls or at several commercial spaces. This is the humble beginning of a cottage industry. Its founder Julia Gandionco had this success story to share from what started out as a home-based bakery. She started out with a lot of effort and diligence to see that her cottage industry would expand. Yet, she never dreamed that her variety of quality products would become a national cottage industry! Today, you may be interested in franchising Julie's Bakeshop which once had a humble begining.

Picture from Vice Mayor El Cid Familiarian's blog

Another one would be the emergence of Bongbong's Piaya. I remembered how I wrote about how this cottage industry went nationwide. What started out with its founder Reynaldo Villan as a piaya cottage businessman and he started exploring with a variety of home-baked quality goods. What started out with piaya soon ended up bringing forth barquilos, mango tarts, caramel tarts, meringue and many more that don't taste commercialized. They managed to expand their cottage industry through a unique blend of old-fashioned methods (assembling by hand) while using other modern methods such as Internet and using newer, better delivery methods. Today, you may find them in the shopping malls too. Besides, part of the reason of their success is because of tourism -- which according to the idiot writer of Fliptards is supposedly "not good for the Philippines". 

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The idea that shopping malls will immediately or automatically destroy cottage industries (such as that idiot writer of Fliptards would like to suggest) -- it only happens when there's reckless development or uncontrolled development. However, these cottage industries as mentioned are somewhat still "cottage industries" because of the quality of their products aren't commercialized. They went to malls where they started doing their events and where franchisees (if ever) manage to rent a space -- which in turn helps expands certain cottage industries.