PERSONAL TOUCH

          Now 67, Alfredo Bulario continues to deliver books to almost 1,000 client educational institutions all over the Philippines, most of them colleges and universities. He does this through his own company, Academic Book Sales Inc., which imports academic books from American, European, and Asian publishers and directly distributes them to school library.

          Bulario had put up the business more than 15 years ago as a sole proprietorship called Alfredo P. Bulario Educational Materials. He started with five publishers as suppliers and with less than 10 schools as clients. In 1995, however, his clientele had grown to a level that he could no longer handle alone, so he enlisted members of his immediate family to do the business with him. He also decided to incorporate the enterprise, changing its name to Academic Book Sales.

          No stranger to the book industry, he was connected to the National Book Store for more than 20 years along with his wife Aurora. His work in marketing enabled him to build strong ties with foreign publishers and local schools. Thus, when he retired from his job, many of the publishers he had worked with at the bookstore continued to keep in touch with him.

          This eventually gave him the idea of starting his own bookselling business. “I thought then that it was time to make myself rich instead of other people,” he recalls.

          The publishers were glad to help him get started, offering not only large discounts on their books but also a very liberal 120-day grace period for payment. “Their trust was my capital,” Bulario says, adding that he only had to invest P4,000 of his own money to put up the business.

          Bulario’s approach to selling books was straightforward marketing – he personally delivered the books to the libraries and asked to review them: “I go back to them after a week or more. If they like the books, they pay for them. If not, they simply return them to me.

          For good will, he would also make it a point to give regular discounts and donate books to his clients during special occasions like Christmas.

          From 1995 onwards, Bulario’s wife managed the company’s finances and his daughter Nanette took over the administrative work and logistic. His two sons, Julius and Auraldo, who were then both in college, quit their studies and joined the family company’s sales force. He explained their decision: “They were studying to be able to work afterwards, but then the job was already there for them to take.”

          Indeed, as someone who had worked as an employee for almost 30 years, Bulario believes that having one’s own business is the surest way to financial success.

            Today, his daughter-in-law Gigie also works in the family business as operations manager, and Bulario has hired an accountant and two more sales agents, in addition to his sons, as the company’s clientele has been growing. The company also continues to actively participate in national and campus-based book fairs.

          Bulario says that the demand for academic books is growing because colleges and universities are adding more courses to their curricula and more new schools are being established. “A school library in particular needs to have a required minimum number of books for the school itself to be accredited,” he explains.

          But as the market for academic books grows, so does the competition. “There used to be just a few academic booksellers but we are many now,” Bulario says. Indeed, the Association of Booksellers for the Academe and the Professions (ABAP) that Bulario founded now has 38 members.

          He also observes that online booksellers like amazon.com are no easy competition, and he admits that his company had momentarily lost some of its clientele to them. But he says that his company nonetheless pushed on with its usual marketing strategies and eventually got those clients back.

          He explains that his returning clients were dissatisfied with the service of online booksellers: “Sabi nila, di nila maisoli ang libro kung mali ang nakuha nila, di gaya pag sa amin. Wala rin silang makukuhang book donations doon. Walang human touch pag sa online [They would tell me that they couldn’t return books that they had mistakenly ordered, unlike when they were dealing with us. They also couldn’t get any book donations from them. There was no human touch online.]”

          Bulario says that even among local booksellers, quality of service is the big differentiator and the building of trust and good relations is very important. He explains: “Quality of service is the name of the game. And you have to be trustworthy and you must know how to get along with your clients.”

          As to what made his company successful through the years, Bulario puts it this way: “Sipag, tiyaga, sinseridad, at mahusay na pakikisama. At pagmamahal sa trabaho [Hard work, perseverance, sincerity, and getting along well with people. And liking what you do]. You really have to love the work.”