It is for this reason that Prince Retail
doesn’t charge customers much, choosing
to keep a very low price point. For Robert,
it is about always serving the
85 per cent of the Filipino
population who are poor
and less well off or, in
his words, “the base
of the pyramid”.
“As long as
we maintain
a very small
margin of profit,
we can still sell
cheaply because
that’s why they
come to us. We
enjoy selling to them
because if they’re from
a remote village, it means
they don’t have to go to the city,
which is far away and expensive,” he
explains. “That’s why we go to the smaller
cities where no-one else operates. As we keptdoing that, we found our customers became
happier. A little help means a lot to them.”
Even though a little help goes a long
way, there are also some heartbreaking
reminders of how much further
there is still to go in
addressing absolute
poverty in the
Philippines. To get
a true idea of the
poverty of some
of these Filipino
communities that
Prince Retail targets,
when basic home
items are on sale or
promotion, people from
nearby mountain and
riverside communities,
would line-up at dawn for
a chance to buy these basic goods.
Robert remembers that during a ‘Buy 1
Take 1’ promotion on bed foam, a customer
was so overjoyed to buy a set that right after“WE REFUSED
TO INCREASE OUR
PRICES... OUR MAIN
GOAL WAS TO
SERVE THE
COMMUNITY
AND KEEP THE
TOWN FED.”
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PRINCE RETAIL GROUP OF COMPANIESINVEST | Interview