Industries:
|
Offering Groups:
|
Solution Areas:
|
Regions:
|
Challenges:
|
Benefits:
|
Suyen Corporation
Suyen wins more markets, strengthens infrastructure to expand beyond local shores
Since 1987, the English word "bench" for Filipinos has come to mean other things than a long seat or a magistrate sitting in court in a judicial capacity. For the past 15 years, it has come to mean a chain of stores selling tasteful clothes.
Mr. Jude W. Ong, Suyen Corporation's Assistant General Manager, emphasized, "Yes, we are a retailer of garments but we have evolved and diversified." And that is in fact an understatement.
Ever wondered how come candies and selected beauty products are now being sold in Bench stores? Currently, Suyen Corporation has business interests in beauty salons and home furniture.
It has set up Fix Salon for hair salon services, Dimensione for home furniture and Human for the hip and fashion-conscious young market. One could easily surmise that the seemingly varied interests and the way the corporation has diversified made Suyen a very strong voice in suggesting what the current Filipino lifestyle is and "…hopefully, what will be for the coming decades," Ong said.
These entries have made marketing practitioners and academicians deduce that Suyen is no longer just a retailer selling garments but a corporation in the business of selling a lifestyle.
Filipino Lifestyle
For the past 15 years, Suyen's most popular brand, Bench, has been affecting Filipino lifestyle and fashion, which started with the opening of the first Bench boutique in 1987 through the combined efforts of Mr. Ben Chan and his sister and brother-in-law, Nenita and Virgilio Lim. Today, Bench is undoubtedly the country's largest retail clothing store with 53 stores, plus 18 Herbench stores, 28 local franchise outlets, and 120 distributors nationwide.
And it does not stop here at home. It has thriving franchises already operating in Al-Khobar, Riyadh and Kuwait in the Middle East. The Bench label, through its authorized retailers, has also demonstrated quite a strong presence in the cosmopolitan cities of California, Canada, Florida, Saipan, Brunei, Taiwan, United Arab Emirates and Palau.
With the opening of the Guam and Shanghai branches, Bench has clearly established itself as a force to reckon with in the very dynamic fashion landscape, offering premium quality products at affordable prices even in the most competitive markets.
Bench's secret is in the merchandise. The mix features a wide collection of locally manufactured men's shirts, trousers and footwear. Enthusiastically embraced by the growing mall market in the Philippines, the Bench line has since expanded to include stationery, men's fashion accessories, toiletries and an extensive underwear range. The Bench lifestyle also includes a teen line called Bench Brats, the Bench Body & Bath line of fragrances and bath products, Prescribe(r) skincare products and Bench Bytes snacks. The ladies' line, HerBench, now also features a line of fragrances and cosmetics, HerBench Colours.
Bench has won several awards both locally and internationally. In 1994, it won a Bronze Award from the New York Festival for International Advertising. The next year in 1995, Bench was awarded with Merit and Excellence Awards and the Platinum Award by the Philippine Ad Congress. The Creative Guild awarded Bench with TV Ad and Print Ad of the Month in June and November 1999.
"In the same year, it was the winner for Asia at the Regional Max Awards for Worldwide D'Arcy, and three gold and two silver awards for print and television at the Philippine Ad Congress. Bench has also won various retail awards: 1997 and 1998, Retailer of the Year by the Philippine Retailers Association; and in 1999, Most Promising Franchise of the Year by the Philippine Franchisers Association and the Golden Shell Award by CITEM.
Headed by Ben Chan as chairman and executive creative director, the company is currently staffed with over 1,200 employees. The Bench products are distributed primarily through boutiques, franchise outlets and concessionaires within department stores. Some Bench products, most especially the grooming and body care products, are also sold in supermarkets, pharmacies or drugstores, and convenience stores; there are also over 75 wholesalers throughout the country.
Operational Challenges
With these dynamic activities for Bench, Suyen's business diversification ushered in new operational challenges. To start with, "the number of items we managed in the warehouse has ballooned. Expanding internationally, to China for example, added a new and daily operational pressure," Ong said.
To this, Ms. Sheila Buensalida, MIS Manager, said, "That's why we are currently in the middle of intensifying our business systems." Buensalida detailed that their initiatives have started with their merchandising-warehousing system, human resources-payroll and financial systems.
She continued, "We are seriously considering just buying third party products for the human resources and the financial systems." When asked why, she stressed, "These applications are common across industries and being so, we can easily get the best out there and implement these applications here." But for the other systems, Buensalida quickly pointed out, "We will definitely do a ground-up development for our merchandising and warehousing system."
"The approach is necessary," Buensalida noted and continued, "Suyen's merchandising and warehousing process is unique." So unique, she professed that it is a source of competitive business advantage to them to which Ong agreed.
"And in the middle of all these operational improvements, we are supporting our POS system present in 220-strong branches across the network," Buensalida shared.
Power of three. Building and enhancing Suyen's ICT infrastructure are in the hands of (from left to right) Dante Dulguime, Oracle DBA; Sheila Buensalida, MIS manager; and Jude Ong, assistant general manager.
Strong Data
With its business lifeblood being driven by the ever-changing fashion industry, Suyen has experienced SKUs representing its different products changing every season and increasing perpetually. Managing this growth and ensuring its integrity are top priorities.
Dante Dulguime, Suyen's Oracle DBA said, "It's not a practice or a policy here to delete. We all store the data. And because of this, doing a manual backup of our data is not anymore practical as it used to. The data we manage now is huge."
With this, Fujitsu Philippines, Inc. offered and implemented an automatic data back-up system that eases Dulguime's concerns and has redirected his time to perform higher value activities for Suyen.
Aside from this, FPI was also tapped to maintain the primary servers that run the critical applications of the Company, like the warehousing and merchandising system. Recently, FPI also supplied the new generation Fujitsu Primepower servers to run the upgraded critical application systems.
Springboard Value
"FPI acts as a springboard. We can toss any idea to the FPI staff and they have always given us a feedback and even a proposal. Even if the project does not push through, FPI is always there. We appreciate that," Dulguime said.
He continued, "FPI's people can be reached when we need to reach them. They always give us a feedback and resolution. We are happy. But above all, they are easy to deal with. We can talk to them with ease." To this Ong agreed.
Market Innovation
With innovative marketing strategies, Suyen's efforts and enthusiasm in delivering creative and engaging visual merchandising and display, particularly in the Bench brand, add up to the kind of retail clothing store that is the seed of Filipino talent.
Amidst a multitude of Filipino-owned corporations born in the last decade or so, only one remains undeniably on top of its genre and it is known by one simple, yet popular name- BENCH.
