TACLOBAN CITY- The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) on Thursday (May 3) kicked off its roadshow on the latest packaging trends to help micro-small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in selling their products.
“Packaging is a market. If packaging is good, the market will increase. This will bring change to our MSMEs. We have to innovate to increase our market and demand,” said DTI Assistant Secretary Demphna Du-Naga in a press conference at the Summit Hotel, this city, during the launching of its Visayas leg “Pack! Pinas” campaign.
The Pak! Pinas is a program of the DTI to help MSMEs in the country in making their products become more saleable through proper and correct packaging.
“The image of your enterprise depends on your brand,” added Benedict Uy of DTI’s Foreign Trade Service Corps while urging MSMEs to change their mindset of being price sensitive.
“Sometimes going cheap is not the way to go,” he said.
Uy emphasized that cheap products are not the name of the game and if entrepreneurs would invest in good packaging they can better position their products and sell them more.
Investing in packaging is the only way to mainstream MSMEs products, he added.
Clarke Nebrao of the Packaging Institute of the Philippines also believed that if entrepreneurs would change their packaging quality this could bring change even to the quality of life of the Filipinos.
Nebreo, whose association is composed of suppliers, manufacturers, and users of packaging materials and services, acknowledged this latest initiative of the DTI.
He emphasized the importance of good packaging, citing on the study that 86 percent of consumers’ purchases are done on the shop floor.
At least 20 Manila-based and 10 local-based suppliers of packaging materials and services were invited by them during the packaging caravan in the city, according to DTI Regional Director Cynthia Nierras.
She also assured of DTI’s continued assistance for small businessmen on their pricing and costing while using an alternative source of materials for their packaging, saying that the type of material to package the product “will influence the volume of sell.”
During the conference, Nierras and her provincial heads reported on the new and top MSMEs’ product lines produced in their respective localities whose packaging are also being innovated.
These are crunchy jack fruit, dehydrated jack fruit, root crops chips, and moron in Leyte; pili, new prospect on cacao chocolate, Northern Samar; dried squid and coconut water for Southern Leyte; calamansi products for Eastern Samar; suman balintawak, ampalaya sticks, atchara, Biliran; Charito’s, baked banana chips, root crop products of Samar; among other products in the region.
Jerry Clavesillas of DTI Bureau of Small and Medium Enterprise Development urged the private sectors to take advantage of the support given to them by the agency under the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte.
About 350 MSMEs joined the scheduled forum where they will be assisted in designing, branding, and marketing their products and services.
DTI will have its next roadshows in Mindanao on May 16- 17 in Cagayan de Oro and in Luzon on May 29-30 in Carmona, Cavite.
(RONALD O. REYES)
