During the expo, the first thing I noticed was that the line was made in a very orderly fashion to avoid pushing in the registration booth. The entrance fee is P50 pesos and you can get a raffle for every ticket bought. According to the secretariat officers, the best prize in the raffle was a franchise of your own. However, they cannot divulge which franchise business they are giving away. The only downside is that you have to be inside the expo when your name is called to be eligible to claim your prize.
There are also mini-seminars being held during the expo. On the first day early morning of the seminar, Francisco Colayco, author of "Pera Mo: Palaguin Mo" series was giving his talk. I went around the expo with my cool tita, Tita Zeny Parilla of Install All (They sell and rent different kinds of ladders). One thing we noticed is that there are several booths for kiosks and food stands. The top three kiosks I remember are those selling noodles, siomai and waffles. There are other businesses as well such as garments, herbal supplements and beauty products, car dealership, jewelry, souvenirs and photo booths.
But the real question here is that why should one attend these kinds of expos? and how can it improve your financial literacy?
1. First, it's really a cheap way to keep abreast on what is the latest trends on microbusiness opportunities right now.
2. You have a chance to grow your network and meet people who have similar interests. You also might find the business partner you've been looking for all this time.
3. You have access to short seminars from financial gurus.
4. And last but not the least, you have lots of opportunities to take photos with the stars of the Kapamilya network. (ok I'm not saying this is the only reason to visit this expo. I'm just having a little fun here.)
But seriously, if the booths and franchises being offered in the expo was twice as fun as the booths of the different Kapamilya shows I'm sure people would be lining up to get their flyers. However, one must also consider the reason for visiting each booth. When you go to the businesses, your goal is to ask around about the business and not to really play games and be the anchor-for-the-day, answer trivia questions or take wacky 5-second pictures and then next pose activities. However, I also noticed that people walk around and yeah they take the businesses' flyers but then people just shove it in their bag or plastic. Hopefully, the potential customer will go back and read it or at least show it to friends or family. So I guess if you can fuse the impact of the entertainment booths and the purpose of the franchise booths to make a memorable visit then that business will definitely have more impact to potential customers and hopefully again more inquiries will turn to more buyers.
So far, the nuggets of truth I took home that day are as follows:
1. Food is still a lucrative business here in the Philippines since there is no aisle in that expo you wouldn't see a person munching or drinking something.
2. That the franchise business can be a good start for a person to try his skills as an entrepreneur. There are several booths there willing to help the incoming franchisee set-up his business from the ground-up (for a fee of course).
3. Filipinos love to bring home freebies (myself including) e.g. the long queue for the free french fries
Well that's it. See you around until the next expo I visit.
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