Lamac artist finds success by teaching neighbors to earn
Lyn Deutsch has almost always never turned down a neighbor seeking her help especially with regards money to buy for food.
Deutsch, an artist who is married to a German national, however, decided one day that she couldn’t always give to her neighbors every time that they would ran out of money.
And so she taught her indigent neighbors in barangay Lamac, Consolacion town northern Cebu how to earn a decent living and provide income to their families.
“They come to me and ask me for assistance like money because they have nothing to eat anymore. It’s our culture to really help our neighbors and I thought that I cannot just keep on giving to them. Instead I should help them get a living and that way they can earn money for their family,” she said.
She also set up an export-import company – Pinococo Import Export, Inc. – to sell what her neighbors made.
At present, Pinococo Import Export, Inc. employs at least 25 people, mostly housewives, earning at least P250 a day.
“They ask for help and also tell me to give them something to do. So in August of 2009 I formally opened Pinococo Import Export, Inc. and registered it so that we can sell the products that we produce here,” she said.
Deutsch started training three indigent women in the neighborhood. She taught them how to cut, treat, and color the raw materials that would be made into fashion accessories.
“I learned all these processes back when I was still working as a consultant for an Italian export company and thought that why don’t I use that and my artistic skills to help them,” she said.
And sometimes, while her workers work on accessories made from indigenous materials like twigs, roots, seeds, leaves, and broken shells, she would watch over their children.
“While they work I was left with the kids and I teach them how to paint because I am an artist and I also do paintings,” she said.
Deutsch said she started with not much capital investment because the firm used only recycled materials.
“When my friends learned that I was doing this business, they gave me a lot of broken things from their homes saying I might be able to make something beautiful out of those broken things,” she said.
Deutsch’s first international customer came from California.
“At present, I have orders from many customers in the U.S. like New York, Moscow, Colorado, Europe, Australia, France which have specialty shops in the area,” she said.
Deutsch believes that there’s a demand for her products in the local and international market because everything we make sell.
“We only make one of each designs so people who are very artistic and wants novelty items really buy my products,” she said.
Deutsch said that one of her strongest market are the locals.
“Filipinos are very appreciative of artistic finds and they love my products because they are made of indigenous materials which is the only one in the world for every design,” she said.
For Deutsch, her products are well accepted in the United States and Europe as well because the trend there now is into natural materials.
“That’s why even when I started the business during the onset of the global economic crisis, I still made money. It’s a niche market that I am catering to,” she said.
Deutsch just recently set up a shop for Baby Collins in Tagbilaran, Bohol featuring all her products.
“I don’t have my own shop yet where I display my products but my friend Mrs. Collins owns one in Tagbilaran and she is displaying all my products there,” she said.
Deutsch also recently set up her own website www.lyndeutsch.com where she is currently getting a lot of visits and interested customers abroad.
“I got my Australian buyer through the website because I put photos of all my products there. At present I got over 6,000 visitors already in the sites from different countries. I’m learning more about HTML so that I can do more in my website,” she said.
To further improve visibility of her products, Deutsch said that she will also be joining the CITEM (Center for International Trade Expositions and Missions) show in Manila next year where she hopes to meet more buyers.
Expansion is in the list of priorities for Deutsch so that she can have more people to hire and help in the process.
“Now we’re doing many things manually because we still don’t have machines. We hope that we can have enough funds soon to finance purchasing of machines for our processes,” she said.
Deutsch said one of her employees, a former trisikad driver in Consolacion now would earn more than P100 a day as compared to only earning as much as P5 per trip during his trisikad driver days.
“I’m so happy that he is now earning more than that for his family. He is already very skillful in cutting raw materials for our accessories. I’d like to help more people like him in the future,” Deutsch said.
