How this woman succeeded in the fragrance business with her modern approach
- Nira Macaspac
"Back in the early 2000s, my parents started importing fragrances for local manufacturers of perfumes, colognes, and other personal care products. My parents would bring home samples from the office and of course, being nosy teenagers, my sister and I would use them, not knowing that these encounters with scents would play a significant role in our future careers."
"A month after, my parents' company was appointed as the distributor of that company and I was invited by my dad to join the company. I could have said no but because I loved scents, I said yes thinking that I'd be the next Joel Cruz. BOY WAS I SO WRONG. I basically became a fragrance saleswoman - but not the one you find in the malls. I basically sold fragrances in drums to manufacturers of personal care products, colognes and perfumes, soaps, detergents, and fabric softeners."
"In December of 2008, my dad asked me to make some perfumes and use those as Christmas gifts for our company's customers instead of buying more expensive gifts. And that I did excitedly! It was finally something that involved some sort of creativity! Having spent one-year selling fragrances to manufacturers who just wanted copies of scents used by Multi-national brands, I was starting to itch to make something different with fragrances. That Christmas season, I purchased empty bottles, cleared out a table in my parents' storage room, and made perfumes. I also dressed up the perfumes a bit, making them easily giftable with handmade bags and a nice label."
BC Fragrance
"My goal has always been to provide affordable, high-quality fragrances for both the Filipino consumer and product maker and to help business owners in strengthening their brand using scents."
Lessons learned from working in the family business
"Eventually, I learned how to work with my family, and I'm pretty sure it's the same as how you work with coworkers and bosses in any other company. You learn about what makes each one tick, what your similarities are, and focus on things you can do together that can contribute to the betterment of the company."
Prioritize. Focus. Repeat.
"When I was younger, I had this notion that in order to be productive and impactful, you have to be busy. I learned the hard way that being a busybody or working long hours doesn't necessarily mean you are getting things done and that you're making significant progress. I've always lived by this principle by the popular author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey-- Prioritize. Focus. Repeat. Thus, I've become much more efficient and don't waste much time on things that don't contribute to reaching my goals. Be smart in deciding what's important and do the important things"
A great business system, a reliable team, and the birth of another business
"We're now in the midst of our second lockdown and I haven't been to the office in more than 2 weeks, yet my business is still running even without me physically being there. I am most proud of creating a reliable team that shares the same vision as I do and establishing a system to ensure the business will continue to run even without me. We sure still have a long way to go and there's still a lot of work to be done but I know that we're going in the right direction."
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Nira Macaspac
Nira is a a brand strategist, startup coach and an advocate of women empowerment.
She is also an educator and a digital media publisher. She has worked as a content producer for different digital media publications in Asia and the Philippines such as Marketing in Asia, Manila Bulletin, StyleMNL, and When in Manila. She has coached several women about branding, personal, and professional development. Visit her website at http://www.niramacaspac.com
