Green entrepreneurship and servicification of manufacturing are “low-hanging fruits” which can be picked by businesses engaged in the country’s design industries.
Design Center of the Philippines (DCP) Executive Director Rhea Matute said one of the works of the DCP is developing green entrepreneurs by equipping them with design services involving not just ways to use or develop materials into crafty ones, but also approaching them from a sustainability or circular side.
“…Ninety percent of the overall manufacturing cost really starts with design and that’s really the first step of the creative process. So we need to be able to understand it, the valuable initial steps that we take for our business and even in the development of products and services and be able to create from within but (be) very mindful of the white spaces in the market. And we are very bullish about green entrepreneurship,” she said during the recent general membership meeting of the Philippine Exporters Confederation Inc.
Matute called on entrepreneurs to understand changes in business models and consumer habits that would be affecting their buy decisions and the way they live their lives.
“Now when you buy something, you already think of like –its after-life, there is planned obsolescence… Now people need to be responsible for the end of life of that product and I think this is something that we all need to be very conscious of,” she added.
Matute cited as an example the Pinyapel project. The discarded pineapple leaves sourced from Bukidnon are processed into specialty paper through a technology created by DCP.
“That’s already a value of zero from the point of the corporate pineapple company and being able to use that zero material into a new material which is now being used by some exporters to develop new products, and it is also being used for sneakers, for clothes, so again sustainable fashion,” she said.
“So this is something that wasn’t a primary revenue source of the pineapple company but it is a side revenue so its understanding what are the other resources that you may have overlooked and to maximize opportunities for the business to create more wealth not just for the company but for the farmers as well,” she added.
Matute further said business activities related to the servicification of manufacturing also presents opportunities.
She said a lot of work being done by exporters has already a service component.
Matute said even big multinational companies producing in the country are using Philippine talent to serve as their partner for content development.
“As well as products are being produced already for their websites or their social media, they can already start promoting the product or promoting what’s coming next so that is already from the side of the creative process outsourcing is already starting to be a low hanging fruit. Even the BPOs (business process outsourcing) are complementing their operations from simple voice to content development so that is I guess one of the low hanging fruits,” she added.
