Whether in services, consumer goods, beauty and health care, or food business, each entrepreneur must stay on top of trends. Here is a regular Philippine Daily Inquirer feature that should give many of you an idea on trends that could complement your business. This is just an excerpt so if you want to read the entire article, click here.

These are the fastest moving products in the various establishments:

Jollibee
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Wondering what level the peso will be at this year (against the dollar of course)? Perhaps you need it for your business strategy or for accounting purposes. Here is a running tally of what analysts and economists see for the peso this year. This feature of Open For Business will be regularly updated. So bookmark this blog!

Citibank - P38 in Q1, P35 by yearend (as of February 4, 2008)
American Express - P40 by yearend (as of December 27, 2007)
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(Photo from AFP)

If you believe the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA), businesses in the consumer sector will continue to have a profitable year in 2008, despite the appreciation of the peso.

Read this article:

MANILA, Philippines — The National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) has downplayed concerns that consumer spending, a major growth driver of the economy, may be dampened this year by the continuing strengthening of the peso.

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Great article today from SME Insight. Read the excerpt:

There’s a new food craze in town, and if you haven’t heard of it yet, you’re either out of touch or you’re getting too old. That’s because since 2006, many young kids, from grade school to college, have been saving up their baon for bowls of cereal they can buy in school. And a lot of yuppies troop to the nearest outlet for their cereal fix too.

So what’s with the bowl of cereal, you ask. At Cerealicious, a cereal bowl is not just a cereal bowl. True, cereals are drowned in milk here, but the toppings go from fruits to chocolates to puddings to coffee jelly and more. In fact, Cerealicious offers 40 cereals and 40 toppings and you can mix them any way you want to or go for any of the 20 certified “blockbuster” mixes cheerily named after blockbuster movies. Thus, you can munch on Charlie and the Chocnut Factory today, order Nutting Hill tomorrow, and snack on Oreo Afraid of the Dark the day after.

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Photos from Agence France-Presse.

(I have not been able to access this blog for the last four days, so I’m posting my entry for last Friday.)

For the last, oh, 5 to 6 years, franchising has continued to fizzle and sizzle in the Philippines, cornering an ever growing share of retail sales especially in Metro Manila. A recent article by Tina Arceo-Dumlao of the Philippine Daily Inquirer that there are now “close to 900 franchises operating in the country from just 50 in 1995 and 64 percent of these are homegrown. These are largely in food, service and retail.”

Interestingly enough, many new franchise owners are 30-something and below, says the Philippine Franchise Association. They know the pulse of the market because they ARE a big segment of the “upwardly mobile professional” market. They are aggressive, looking not just at the Philippine market but ASEAN and beyond. They have nimble business sense and they readily morph and adapt their business strategies to suit the market — something that older, more traditional businessmen might have difficulty doing.

“Franchising is definitely a growing market,” Bartolome says. “Every month, there are entrepreneurs starting to expand via franchising. More and more Philippine companies that are franchising here are now inspired to expand beyond the shores like within the ASEAN region, Middle East and North America. I could see that within the next decade, almost all businesses will be into franchising,” says Amando Bartolome, a franchise consultant.

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