H e l l o S i r J o h n A n d G l o r y. X D Im Going To Report About: Rolando Hortaleza – Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Splash Corporation

[ Biography ]  A Medical Student Who Had Just Started A Family.  He Has A Wife Named Dr. Rosalinda Ang-Hortaleza.  a wholly-owned Filipino company with business interests in personal care manufacturing and marketing, international distribution, and recently, nutraceuticals development and marketing.  was one of the 1999 Ten Outstanding Young Men (TOYM) Awardees for Entrepreneurship.

[ Humble Beginnings ] 1985  Dr. Rolando Hortaleza and Dr. Rosalinda Ang-Hortaleza, got married after graduating from medical school and pooled together the cash gifts they received as wedding presents amounting to Php12,000. On 2 May 1985, using the Php12,000 as start-up capital, the couple paid Php5,000 to a cousin in exchange for a special formula for a cuticle remover. With the rest of the money, they bought an inventory of acetone, cuticle remover, amber bottles, and packaging materials to start a repacking business.  RBH Cosmetics, a backyard enterprise that packaged and distributed acetone, cuticle remover and cold wave lotion to neighborhood beauty parlors, was established.

[ Continued. ] 1986  RBH Cosmetics became Hortaleza Cosmetics.  First year revenues amounted to a little over Php100,  Hortaleza Cosmetics was renamed as Splash Cosmetics.  Splash made its first Php1 million in sales with Splash hair spray  Splash invested in low budget TV commercials using slides.

[ Trial-S And Hardship-S. ]  Times were hard then, and political situation unstable. Under these circumstances, Hortaleza knew it would take time to establish a practice and make a comfortable living out of it.  He also was not sure if he could provide his children good education with that he could make as a doctor.  Other copycats joined the fray. And soon the level of competition went down to pricing war.  He could not compete on the price. Hortaleza decided to set great store by his product’s value.

[ Continued. ]  Working with his wife and a houseboy from a makeshift “laboratory” at their dilapidated apartment, Hortaleza went on to produce cold wave lotion, cuticle removers and hair sprays.  Since he had no collateral to secure a bank loan, he relied on check rediscounting to fill orders, and soon ran up on debts.  His wobbly chemistry background and lack of equipment resulted in total waste-age and plenty of returned merchandise..

[ Road To Success ]  His luck turned in 1989 when he asked a sales clerk to name him a product that she thought had virtually no competitor.  1991 – He launched Extraderm Exfoliant. The product took the market by storm and dominated the exfoliant sector long enough to pave way for Maxi- Peel, another high performing astringent aimed at younger women.  Splash soon dominated the market with an 80- percent share of the skin care pie.

[ Future Plans ]  He was poised to make his company a formidable international player. And was his plan to list shares of the Splash Holdings Inc.  Next year, as part of efforts to raise money to grow subsidiaries Splash International, Splash Pharmaceutical Corp.  He expects to raise 3.5 billion PHP from the sale of 30% of its shares at the Philippine Stock Exchange.

[ Business Lesson ]  A business [ should be ] dynamic.  It must be flexible and attuned to the changing times.  It must not stand still or be passive.  It should continually search for progress and improvements.  It must regenerate and reinvent itself.

[ Quotation ] “Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value.” -- Albert Einstein

La Fin. Thank You.