AT THE DANGWA Flower Market, some 50-plus vendors sell an array of fresh cut flowers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This market has been there for more than 30 years. Retail buyers and those with floral businesses flock to this market for their floral needs.

Jay Domingo and his wife Gina run a branch of Pat’s Flowers & Supplies in Dangwa. The main outlet located in Quiapo was put up by Gina’s grandmother in the early ‘70s. It still exists today.

As the name suggests, Pat’s Flowers & Supplies does more than just provide flowers: They also make available to flower shops the supplies they need, from pots, ribbons, and other tools of the trade.

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UPDATE: Editor’s note: Added video taken by INQUIRER.net business editor Ma. Salve Duplito.

FRANCO MESINA is in an enviable position. At twenty-something, his problem is how to keep up with the success of Icylicious, his snow cone business, and how to sustain the seasonal business of FranzAvian Trading Co. Ltd., which supplies equipment to water refilling stations. Franco has been running his businesses with his girlfriend Abby Sarmiento, and they sat down with mentor Willy Arcilla for advice last March for their first mentoring session.

Because they had space in front of Fountain Cool, the water refilling station in Binondo he put up with his dad, Franco thought of selling something there. Lots of young people pass by on their way to school.

And so Franco and Abby started Icylicious just three months ago. They registered the business with DTI and SEC. They got an electric ice crusher and sourced ready-to-use syrups for the snow cones. To distinguish themselves from other snow cone vendors, Franco and Abby made sure the syrups are delicious and do not leave discoloration in the teeth and mouth. They would sell as much as 1,000 cups of 6-oz. styro cups a day for P15 a cup, so the profits are coming in swiftly. Franco foresees the return on investment to happen in five to six months’ time.

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NEAR THE FAR end of Tomas Morato Avenue in Quezon City, a new restaurant has been quietly luring diners these past seven months with its authentic Asian cuisine. This is Nasi Lemak, a small cozy restaurant just across the big McDonald’s outlet with French fries on its roof.

There’s a queue at lunch and dinner on weekends, and during weekdays at peak hours, the restaurant gets almost full too. And it’s all due to word of mouth, as satisfied customers rave about the tasty dishes, mostly Singaporean, at reasonable prices.

Restaurant consultant H.K. Tan, a Singaporean, says they are very particular about the quality of the food they serve, to the point of being paranoid. “We import ingredients to be assured of consistent quality,” he says. They also don’t scrimp on the ingredients to be used in the dishes so as to give customers the real deal.

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“FAMILIARITY breeds contempt,” so goes the well-known proverb. To some married couples, this holds true so they make sure they’re out of each other’s hair during the day — the husband off to work, and the wife off to her own job or home duties.

But then there are those couples who somehow make their relationship work even in the workplace.

Take marketing guru and popular author Josiah Go, chairman and chief marketing strategist of Mansmith and Fielders Inc., and his wife Chiqui Escareal-Go, president and chief sales strategist of the same organization. At Thursday’s Women to Women Mentoring Conference organized by the Women’s Business Council at the Philippine Trade Training Center, the couple revealed that not only do they have a good marriage; they have a good working relationship as well.

How do they do it? The Gos tell us their secrets:

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(This post marks the first entry of Karen Galarpe, the new blogger for Open For Business. Karen is the editor of SME Insight, the Inquirer group’s magazine for entrepreneurs, and has been a journalist for almost two decades now. She has written extensively on entrepreneurship in many different magazines and books like The Ultimate Guide To Starting Your Own Business and has been a consulting editor of Entrepreneur. Karen is bringing in her extensive experience on writing about entrepreneurship and is a great addition to the INQUIRER.net team. Welcome, Karen! — Ma. Salve Duplito)

SOME years ago, in an interview with Good Housekeeping magazine, Sharon Cuneta advised the GH reader what to do if she had P50,000: Put half of it in a high-yielding account in the bank, place about 10 to 15 percent in a savings or checking account for emergency, then start a small-scale business selling cakes (if the reader loves to bake) with a startup capital of P5,000.

Many entrepreneurs started out this way, putting up a business they love with a small capital. And they have found out that the rewards are good — money will flow in most cases, and they’ll get to do what they love to do.

Take my high school batchmate Analyn, for instance. She’s good at cooking and so she started selling chicken pastel and baked macaroni from her home on a small capital. Soon she got a small space in Greenhills Theater Mall and the Peach Box business was born. Analyn tells me that among her regular customers are showbiz people, with whom she’s now on first name basis. Her business, which she runs with her sister-in-law, Joan, is growing, and now she has other products as well, like kesong puti made from pure carabao milk from the family business, Arce Dairy.
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