Metaphors in Baguio’s Market Encounter

Metaphors in Baguio’s Market Encounter
By Maurice Malanes
Inquirer Northern Luzon
First Posted 17:32:00 02/20/2010

Filed Under: Economy and Business and Finance, Entrepreneurship, Health and Beauty Products, Consumer Issues

BAGUIO CITY – A talented child’s search for healthier body care products for her allergy-sensitive skin eventually created a home-based industry, unexpectedly transforming her and her pastor-parents into accidental entrepreneurs.

One can discover this story among the more than 200 tent-covered business stalls at Burnham Park in what has been packaged as “Market Encounter,” a highlight of the yearly Panagbenga, a February 1 to March 7 festival celebrating the blooming season of flowers in Baguio and Benguet.

During her teens, Melody Ayupan found that her body was extra-sensitive to certain foods and to chemically-laden and scented soaps. To deal with her food allergies, she simply shifted to organic diet.

But for her skin allergies to scented soaps, Ayupan embarked on a scientific research on how to make alternative soaps and other body care products for her personal use.

She searched the Internet and books and consulted a chemist friend about how to make skin-friendly organic soaps. Her effort paid off.

She first made her own bath soap using strawberry and vegetable oil in 2000. She was then barely 14.

“She understands chemicals, enzymes and other substances very well like a pro,” says Lorna Jane Ayupan, a pastor and mother of Melody. Melody being a science buff (she was a science high school scholar) definitely helped her, says her mother.

Since then, Melody, aided by her parents, has been making her own bath soap, which proved excellent for her sensitive skin.

Consumer demand

During Christmas and other special occasions like weddings and birthday celebrations, Melody and her parents would offer their products as gifts to friends, relatives and church mates.

What proved helpful to Melody and her parents turned out to be effective for those who received the soaps as gifts. In no time, the gifts’ recipients began making orders.

Melody and her parents had no choice but to produce and deliver the goods. But this time, the goods were no longer free gifts, but for sale. The Ayupans have been thrust into business.

“We never intended to go into business,” says the elder Ayupan. “But we had to respond to the orders. The interesting thing about this venture is that it has become a business only after consumers created the demand. We see this as God working in strange, miraculous ways.”

Natural metaphors

There was no turning back for the Ayupans, who in late 2003 finally registered their products with a brand name Melody coined -- Natural Metaphors.

“I just love the word,” says Melody, referring to metaphor. “It is interesting that we can understand many things through metaphors. The blind, for example, can understand the color white through the metaphor of the soft cotton.”

She says her brand is also a metaphor for many consumers’ desire for natural alternative products, which are friendly not only to people’s bodies but to the environment as well.

With a business to establish first, Melody, now 24, has to temporarily quit her political science course as her planned stepping stone to a law degree.

“Every thing has its time,” she says. “I can always continue my pre-law course and law degree once my baby [referring to the family’s new business] can take off on its own.”

From the few bars of soap, which she used to make for her own use, Melody, aided by her parents and a chemist consultant, now makes an average of 2,000 pieces of 150-gram bath soaps each month at their home in La Trinidad, Benguet.

Retailed at P100 each, the soaps alone can gross P200,000 monthly. This income is shared by some 100 retailers, who buy the products at wholesale prices and retail them at the suggested consumer price.

“We are happy that this home-based industry is helping ordinary housewives, office workers and students who can earn extra pesos during these hard times,” says Melody’s mother.

Besides their now popular strawberry soap, the Ayupans make other soaps using rice bran and various fruits (like papaya, banana, pineapple and avocado) and vegetables (like carrots) in season.

They are also gradually diversifying their products, which now include feminine wash and facial creams and toners. “Also watch out for our shampoo bar,” Melody announces, referring to a solid, instead of liquid, shampoo product, which will be out soon.

The story of winners like Melody and her parents with their pioneering products is what helps give soul to Panagbenga’s Market Encounter. Otherwise, the business stalls in tents would just be another tiangge or flea market.

Sights and scents of flowers

Also adding life to the Market Encounter is its accompanying landscaping competition. This year’s competition involves two categories – the open and carpet categories.

Under the open category, participants integrate flowing water, old driftwoods, rocks, Igorot hut replicas, and other items with an array of plants and flowers. The carpet category involves only short plants, but the joyful mix of their flowers with all their rainbow colors prove to be this year’s new attraction.

“Our landscaping competition is now slowly becoming international,” says Market Encounter coordinator Damaso Bangaoet Jr., the acknowledged father of Panagbenga.

He cites Usanee Pascual Fungladda, a Filipino-Thai lady, whose landscaping entry reflects scenes and contexts from the Philippines and Thailand. Her father, who maintains orchid farms in Thailand, exports orchids to various countries while she and her mother have an orchid farm in San Jose, Nueva Ecija, which supplies orchids in the country.

The 21 landscaping entries under the open category and the 19 under the carpet category promise to make the Market Encounter not only a business experience. They can also help both visitors and residents to take time to relish the sights and scents of flowers as the bees and butterflies do.