Villamor Charlene F.

BSED MATH 3
YOUNG CEBUANO ENTREPRENEURS

1. Erica Neal: Fated to bake

Erica Neal found the ‘zoet’ or sweet tooth of every Cebuano through her cakes and pastries. Coming from a
family with fashion accessories for a business, Erica is naturally creative. She was first enrolled in a business
course but shifted to her calling which is culinary. Zoet Cakes and Pastries started in 2009 and from then on,
her store has become the home of the best cheesecakes and cakes in town. Her creativity is evident in the
personalized design of cakes and cupcakes she bakes. When Erica Neal was still studying culinary back in 2007,
she didn't like baking. She loves cooking but she wasn't a fan of pastry. In fact, she hated it back then, her
colleagues even knew it. But things turned out differently for her. After her culinary studies, the 29-year-old
chef ended up managing her own online pastry business now known as Zoet Cakes and Pastries.
She had studied crash courses at the International Culinary Arts Academy of Cebu (ICAAC). Her being creative
had significantly influenced her to eventually embrace baking and love it. And little did she know, she would
be making cakes in her life.
"I’ve always been an artistic person, and it was much easier to play around with pastry and food," the lady
chef entrepreneur shared to The FREEMAN. "The cake decorating side made me enjoy it."
Zoet means "sweet" in Dutch.
How she started
"I started making Belgian chocolates when I first started. Then since Belgian chocolates were a bit pricey and
there was not really a huge market for that at that time, a friend of mine asked me to make a customized cake
for her daughter's birthday. So I did and made a couple little desserts too, at that time 'dessert tables' weren’t
a thing yet.
And it grew from there, people liked what they saw and tasted and because of word of mouth I started getting
messages from people asking me to make stuff," Erica recalled.
Her business started in 2009 but looking back she really didn't plan to go into business then.
"While in culinary school, no I didn’t think of opening a business. I wanted to go work outside the country that
was the path in my head I created.
"But once I got to meet this one particular chef and he gave me a lot of advice and stories about how he
became who he is now and how he grew, I was inspired by that," the Cebuana chef said.
Coming from a family who is business oriented, Erica knows running an enterprise isn't as easy as anyone
would like to believe.
"It definitely not easy to run a business, there are its ups and downs. It’s an everyday challenge and obstacle
you have to do. That’s why sometimes I laugh at people really young people who say I want to open a
business. I would always try to encourage them, go and experience things first before jumping into that,
because not everything you learn from business school or what not you apply in the real world. You have to
experience it to know and understand how it works," she said.
Today, Erica offers different kinds of pastry and cake products for various events and celebrations to her
customers who call her and inquire online.
Zoet also makes specialty pastries such as brownies, cookies and glass desserts.
She maintains a commissary in their residence in Capitol Site in Cebu City.
"I just want to continue catching the people’s sweet tooth. And if they continue to enjoy it we will continue to
make it. And I think it’ll grow from there," she said when asked about her future plans.
"I’ve been blessed to collaborate with a couple of people and got to meet different people through this little
thing that started in my mom's kitchen," she said.
Her mom is one of her entrepreneurial influences.
"My family is such a business oriented family and my mum is one amazing business women. Everything I know,
tricks of the trade on being an entrepreneur I got and learned from her. I saw how she grew her own business
to something big too," the entrepreneur shared.
Aside from online orders which are usually picked up in their commissary, she also ships products to her
clients outside Cebu.
"People know us for our cheesecakes and mango butterscotch. The butterscotch is one product that’s actually
flown out a lot. As much as the client wants the cheesecake, is not practically to hand carry one. We don’t
actually deliver to everyone. They normally get picked up but in circumstances like if the orders are from
Manila example, we drop them at the cargo in the airport and they get picked up by the clients," she said.
Erica has been asked to put her products in certain retail stores and even put up shops outside Cebu, however
this isn't something in her immediate plans yet.
"I like the concept we have now, and it allows me to do collaborations with different people too. I get to learn
and experience different things," .

2. Christian Paro-an
A young entrepreneur started his business when he was in college.Today, RC Goldline Salesshop Corp., headed
by Christian Paro-an, is now on its 17th year with nine stores scattered in different establishments in Cebu. RC
Goldline is a one-stop shop for tech-savvy for they provide telecommunication products and gadgets. 

HAD Christian Tan Paro-an passed the board exam in accountancy, there would be no RC Goldline today and
the chairmanship for Cebu Business Month 2016 would not be in his hands.

“Purpose,” the 38-year-old businessman told Sun.Star Cebu in an interview to explain what brought him to
where he is today. In his younger days, Paro-an said all he dreamt of was to become a successful accountant
and lawyer. But fate had other plans for Paro-an, now one of the youngest trustees of the Cebu Chamber of
Commerce and Industry (CCCI).

“If I had passed the board exam for accountancy, I would not be here in business. You would not see RC
Goldline today,” the local tech-entrepreneur said, who has grown his one-man business to more than a
hundred people today.
At 19, Paro-an unknowingly cultivated his entrepreneurial spirit, selling anything that his friends and
classmates would need, from clothes to bulky mobile gadgets in the 1990s.”I wanted to earn my first P10,000
so I could leave home. I wanted to leave, not because we had family issues, but because I wanted to be
independent. I wanted to be a CPA lawyer,” the businessman recalled.

Eager to earn such amount, Paro-an, the eldest of three siblings, worked as an agent for a telecommunication
company selling postpaid plans. To reach out to more customers, he had to go to the streets to distribute
flyers to passersby.

“I earned more than P10,000, more than what I needed,” a smiling Paro-an recalled.

Business, he said, was initially not his interest. Being a son of an entreprenial mother, he said he didn’t want
the headaches and hassles of running abusiness. His father, meanwhile, was a banker, who was his inspiration.

Since a career in the financial industry did not seem as promising after failing the board exam, Paro-an
considered going into business.

Before RC Goldline, there used to be a pawnshop called RC Goldmine in downtown Cebu City. Paro-an said this
was his business address when he worked as a freelance agent for telco providers.

In 1997, he opened RC Goldline Saleshop Corp., retaining the “RC Gold” for name recall. It was limited to
kiosks designated near some universities in Cebu City.

“What people called RC Goldmine before, was RC lang. So since people knew about it already, I carried it with
me,” Paro-an said.

It was in 2000 when Paro-an first opened his first physical branch in Ramos St. in Cebu City, near the Cebu
Institute of Medicine. He said it first started out as a kiosk until he got the chance to rent a space where he
displayed different mobile phones and telco products.

RC Goldline’s first mall presence was at Elizabeth Mall in 2003 until it gradually expanded to bigger malls like
SM City Cebu, JCentre Mall and Gaisano Island Mall Mactan. Presently, RC Goldline has 10 stores in Cebu and
two in Bohol.

The business also expanded to become an authorized service center for various cellphone brands. Paro-an
proved that even without any background in information technology, one can go into this business.

“I know how to spot opportunities and I trusted my people,” Paro-an said.

With his growing telecom shop, Paro-an is also active in various organizations.

He is an active member of Junior Chamber International (JCI) Metro Cebu uptown and he also served as the
organization’s president in 2007.

In 2014, he was awarded as one of the Top Outstanding Business Leaders in Cebu and received Go Negosyo’s
10 Young and Inspiring Cebu Entrepreneurs award.

Aside from the growing competition in his line of business, Paro-an is faced with another challenge this year--
chairing the Cebu Business Month (CBM) celebration.
CBM is the flagship project of CCCI that is celebrated in the whole month of June. This year’s Digital Cebu
theme seeks to “promote the culture of innovation, growing businesses through digital strategies and business
analytics, and explore new technologies to upgrade business.”

In addition, Digital Cebu is also aimed at enhancing governance through digital innovation and leveraging
digital technology in Cebu.

“CBM 2016 is all about innovation and digital technologies. Digital Cebu is a statement of fact: Cebu is at the
forefront of using technology to boost business. We are among the top locations for ICT and BPM companies.
But we should not be complacent. Digital Cebu is also a rallying call: We need to harness digital technologies
to boost our business and keep our edge,” Paro-an in a statement said.

Under his leadership, Paro-an hopes for the best. As one of the youngest CBM chairpersons in history, he
believes that there must be a purpose to being appointed as this year’s chair, despite the growing demand of
his personal business.

“I did not dream of having this, but it came. I will accept this responsibility,” he said.

Just like how he became an entrepeneur, the responsibility of being this year’s CBM chair came as an
opportunity he did not dream of having.

“This is not for me, but for Cebu,” Paro-an said.