A blessed new year to all!
New years are all about hope, dreams, and ambition. In some cases it is about healing, breaking free of toxicity in your life/lives giving a new meaning to what moves you and what gets you up form bed every morning.
Over the past decade our small family business has been reshaped several times to meet what you, our dear suki's, want and need. The changes you experience with us are iterations made to help YOU and your household achieve health and wellness. In a nutshell, these are the milestones we had achieved in the past decade.
2010 to 2011 - Started a job with Nestle Philippines. Got a preview of how to sell health and wellness early on form this company. Left the company a year later
2011 to 2014 - I formally left my desk job from Unilever RFM Ice Cream. Well, it wasn't really a desk job--i went from being a field salesman to an area manager. Thankful for the past opportunity and learnings. Met my wife here.
2014 - Got sick, very sick. Used lemon water and prayers to recover from the debilitating disease.
2015 - Started selling and repacking lemons to offices in the Makati/Ortigas/Ortigas CBD areas. Started the company "Lemons and Greens". Fun FACT: We started with only 2 boxes of lemons per week (300pieces). Still amazed me how this worked out.
2016 - Continued and forged on to include other dining table staples eg. oranges, apples, grapes.
2016 - Also got married this year. Life gave me lemons, I sold them, and bought an engagement ring and a wedding ring.
2016 - Renamed the company to Crate2Plate.
2017 - Started owning the gift giving segment in this very traditional business to include the needs of the ever-evolving customer on social media. Worked. Provided a very healthy option during Christmas and other occasions.
2017 - Wife gave birth to CC this year.
2018 - Started being a "houseband", juggling the needs of Crate2Plate while keeping the baby alive. Wife had to work full time to keep the husband alive...and the baby of course.
2018 - Crate2Plate needed new management, brought in the wife to head marketing. I was demoted to logistics and human resources.
2018 - Started including several exotic, and rare fruits in the market. Happy customers.
2019 - Launched our new Christmas boxes. Started serving several businesses with our evolved online palengke :)
2020 - Started the new year sleeping. We closed at 6pm on December 31, 2019. Ended our celebrations at 11:30pm exhausted, drained, but fulfilled.
Realization:
It is in our nature as conscious beings, to wonder why some things are the way they are-- this starts in early infancy and carries on with us until our time is up. And at times we become impatient to reveal the results that are favorable to us, or to our current situation, to keep that sense of security (or predictability).
Looking back at the infantile steps I took to start the business you, our customers now enjoy and share, I had really no idea where I wanted to bring it. I really had no idea how long selling lemons would sustain me. Quite frankly, I have no idea how it would sustain anyone (haha). But there are milestones that I wanted to achieve, (Get married, Start a family), so I made the situation work to provide me the upside that I needed. Luckily, my why/my reason came within a span of a decade, for some it might take longer, but I took it one day at a time, even when it was hard to keep moving forward. As MLK once said, "If you can't fly, run. If you can't run, walk, if you can't walk, crawl. But no matter what, you must keep moving forward."
How was your decade?
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