Client Stories > Aurora Cruz

Micro-enterprise : Bakery and Sari-sari Store
TSPI Branch : TSPI – Antipolo Branch

Baking was not an interest of Aurora Cruz at first. Aurora, because of her parents’ difficulty in raising ten (10) children, stopped her AB Economics degree after finishing her first year at the Calauag State University in Quezon province and decided to try her luck in Manila. She got employed from 1978-1979 in a thread factory, where she earned P12 a day. After leaving her first job, she married Avelino and settled in Tanyong, Marikina, where her husband worked as a tricycle driver. In 1980, Aurora put up a sari-sari store, which went well until the boom of shopping malls that caused her daily sales to drop from P3,000 to P1,000. This adversity made the couple, together with their two (2) children Abigail and Michael, relocate in their present home in Buntong Palay, San Mateo, Rizal, in the year 2000.

Their relocation paved the way for a fresh start for their family. Aurora again put up a small sari-sari store in front of their house while Avelino still worked as a tricycle driver but now in Buntong Palay. The store had a daily sales of P2,500 while her husband’s daily income was P400. In 2001, Aurora learned of TSPI’s group lending program from a TSPI client who used to deliver garlic to her store. She easily liked the lending program because of the low interest rate, savings and insurance products, “mababa ang hulog” (low amount of weekly repayments), and because she is able to meet new friends. Her first three loans (total of P 21,000) were all used for additional capital of the sari-sari store.
                                 
Having an eye for the needs in their new community, she used part of her 4th loan (P11,000) to start a bakery  business and got two (2) workers – 1 baker and 1 helper. It was hard at first since she didn’t know how to bake or how to run a bakery, but she strived to learn the business because people are always looking bread in their place. She saw the need to have another bakery in their area because the nearest existing bakery sometimes could no longer deliver to other households. Aurora was earning a daily sales of P2,000 and daily profit of P500 from baking bread alone so she decided to formally start her own bakery on 24 March 2003. When she became serious with the bakery business, she hired a master baker who taught her different baking methods.

At present, their daily production of bread is at an all-time high, with 7 sacks of flour weighing 25 kg. being consumed in one day unlike before when they could only use up 2 sacks. Some of the finished products are sold in her sari-sari store and the rest is delivered to bakeries in neighboring barangays. The bakery now has three (3) delivery tricycles and ten (10) workers – a master baker, a 2nd master baker, 2 helpers, 3 delivery boys, and 3 re-packers. Only Aurora, sometimes helped by her husband and children, mans the sari-sari store. The average daily sales of the bakery now is P8,000 , with net profit of  P1,500. The sari-sari store has P1,750 daily sales and P400 daily profit. The 2 businesses produce an annual sales of about P3,276,000, annual profit of P638,400, and now has a market value of P299,900.

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