Grand Bossing at 88
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| National Book Store founder Socorro “Nanay Coring” Ramos:She was an entrepreneur at age 10, peeling off paper from cigarettes. She wears an outfit with rosettes |
What started as a stall in Escolta selling textbooks and G.I. novels
is now National Book Store, the largest bookstore chain in the
Philippines with affiliate companies Powerbooks, Crossings Department
Store, Anvil Books, Atlas Publishing, Cacho Hermanos Printing Press, NBS
Book Express (that’s only to name a few), thanks to Mrs. Socorro
Cancio-Ramos. National Book Store outlasted their competition back in
the day, which included Alemar, Philippine Education and Vasquez. Hers
is a story to inspire every aspiring businessman, and the stuff fairy
tales are made of. People say she can sell almost anything to absolutely
anyone. She is one of the most charming people you will meet in your
life. These are 10 things you should know about “super salesgirl”
Socorro Ramos, more fondly known as Nanay Coring.
1.
She is still very much the boss and goes to work every day, entertains
and negotiates with publishers who are in town, and checks the warehouse
and the branches. To this day! And she is 88!
“You
have to be an example,” Nanay Coring explains. “They can say, ‘eh kung
siya nagbubulakbol, eh di magbubulakbol din ako.’ But if you show that
you are there on time in the morning up to leaving time, then you are
the example.” She doesn’t take vitamins and is not on any maintenance
medicine. She says she has been blessed with good health. What keeps her
going? “I eat a lot,” she says, and bashfully shares that lechon is her
favorite.
2. On tablets, e-books, e-zines, and the Internet: “I tell you, there’s nothing like a book.”
She
says this about books: “It’s something that you can write on, highlight
if you like a certain paragraph, you can smell it, showcase it, hand it
down to your children and your children’s children.” On National Book
Store having a website, she says there’s no choice since that’s part of
the game. “It’s a sad thing if books will disappear, although I don’t
think that will happen.”
3. Nanay Coring in numbers:
11:
Number of great grandchildren, from nine grandchildren from her three
children — Alfredo and wife Presentacion Sunico, Benjamin and wife
Virginia Sian, and daughter Cecilia and husband Maximo Licauco.
268:
Number of santos in her collection, 233 in her home and 35 in her
office. Her favorite is St. Anthony, the patron saint of lost things,
because “Isang beses nawalan ako ng singsing, I prayed and prayed to
him, and I found it.”
98: Grade she received in her favorite subject back in school, which was biology.
4,500: Current number of employees of National Book Store in 150 branches nationwide.
15: Awards received, including the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2005.
4. Nanay Coring was an entrepreneur at the age of 10.
Every
year, during the two-month vacation from school, she would take on a
“summer job.” They had neighbors who were working in the cigarette
factory, and they offered her the job of having to peel off the paper
from the cigarettes — two packs for five centavos. “It was a whole
warehouse of cigarette packs,” Nanay Coring shares. “And I could not
finish that so I hired 10 of my playmates, then I’d pay them.” Her tubo?
2.5 centavos per package.
On another vacation break, she
worked at American Sweets wrapping bubble gum, and was even commended by
her foreign employer for being one of the fastest bubble gum wrappers.
During another two months, she worked as a server in a small restaurant,
where a customer actually ordered an extra bottle of milk for her to
drink on the spot because she was too skinny. “I was very thin, kasi
mahirap lang kami,” Nanay Coring says. She was the second to the
youngest among six children.
5. She eloped with
husband Jose Ramos when she was 19. Although she wouldn’t advise young
people to do the same because times are different now, she says that in
her case, “It was the right decision.”
She
vividly remembers being in Avenue Theater watching film footage of the
Pearl Harbor bombing during World War II. It was when the Japanese
occupied the Philippines that her then-boyfriend said, “Sumama ka na sa
akin.” She recalls, “So sinundo ako sa Sta. Cruz, Laguna, at derecho
kami kay Judge Almeda Lopez to get married.” Her late husband Jose had a
sister who married her older brother Manuel, and Nanay Coring met Jose
while working at the Ramos family-owned Goodwill Bookstore. Jose took
over one of the branches, which he and Nanay Coring renamed as National
Book Store.
On what made her fall in love with him, she
fondly says, “Mabait. At masipag.” She shares: “They say love is blind,
pero ang pagmamahal, impulse. You cannot impose.”
6.
She and her husband had to build and rebuild National Book Store three
times. While others would take that as a sign that it might not be the
right business to pursue, Nanay Coring insisted on sticking to it:
“That’s the only thing I know.”
Nanay Coring went
to a public school for elementary and high school. As much as she
wanted to go to college (she wanted to take up medicine), her parents
had no money to send her to school (both tuition and books were so
expensive). When asked if she ever thought of going back to school when
she did get to save up enough money, she says, “No more, I was too busy
with the business already.” She does believe that education is a
person’s most important asset, the key to the future, and the most
reliable escape from poverty.
During the early days of
National Book Store, she and her husband were everything from manager to
cashier to janitor. After building their business selling at a stall,
they had to rebuild a second time after the war had left everything in
shambles. But of all the hardships she went through in life, the hardest
would have to be the third time they had to rebuild, when Typhoon Gene
hit and the roof of their barong barong store flew off and everything
was soaked. “My arms and feet were numb, yun pala those were signs of
having a heart attack,” she recalls. It was firm determination that
pushed them to go on, getting a bank loan worth P300,000 back in the
1940s.
It has become her advocacy to sell quality books
and supplies at a reasonable price, saying: “Well, because once upon a
time, wala din akong pera.”
7. She had a close
encounter with Japanese soldiers during the war, and despite the
language barrier, they understood each other and the soldiers even gave
her a gift.
Nanay Coring recalls being so scared
one time when their whole house was surrounded by soldiers. She was
thinking of ways to make them leave. “Nakita ko yung isang Hapon na may
sword, siguro leader yun, so lumapit ako. Di kami magkaintindihan pero
tinuro ko yung mga Hapon. Naintindihan niya ako. Umalis nga sila.” She
then cooked bukayo, a traditional Filipino coconut and sugar dessert,
and gave it to them. “Tuwang tuwa sila. The next day, binigyan nila ako
ng dalawang piyesa ng pranela para daw sa kambal,” she shares. Amidst
the war, there were simple acts of kindness. As Nanay asserts, “Actions
speak louder than words.”
8. She prefers reading to watching TV, but if you ask who her favorite actor is, she’ll say it’s John Lloyd Cruz.
Nanay
Coring’s daughter-in-law Tita Virgie Ramos shares that Nanay finds John
Lloyd exceptionally good looking and a very good actor. And since Nanay
Coring doesn’t like watching her favorites play “the bad guy,” John
Lloyd’s choice of roles in both TV and film made her love him more. She
also likes the trademark humor of his commercials.
9. Nanay Coring on the youth today:
Biggest
change in a good way: “They are more intelligent. That’s my observation
with my grandchildren, maybe because they have more access to reading
materials now. They are a little bit more aggressive. They don’t fear
about getting lugi. If they fail, they stand up again very quickly.”
Best
invention the youth use: “Apple. Yung mga ganyan na ginawa ni Steve
Jobs.” She says she doesn’t buy gadgets on her own but a lot of people
give her. She’s still trying to learn how to use them.
On
cell phones: She only uses them to call. She knows what the word
“jejemon” means and in one speech, she shared how she got a text that
said “CUL8R” and had no idea that it meant she was supposed to see that
person later in the day.
10. With all her
accomplishments in life, at the end of the day, she feels her biggest
achievement is “having good children and good families.”
“I
can disappear anytime,” she shares. “But if your children know how to
let the business go on, and you know they have good values, then you’re
happy.” When asked how it feels that her children’s children’s children
now enjoy a comfortable life, opposite of her life as a child, she says,
“I thank God for giving me all this after so much hardship, and I just
pray na maging mabait sila.”
On the best advice she can give young people:
1) “You have to have firm determination to succeed.”
2) “Be humble, even if you are successful, don’t act as if kung sino ka.”
3) “Be industrious.”
* * *
One
of the most recent and most inspiring awards that Nanay Coring received
was the MVP Grand Bossing Award for 2011. She was hailed as the big
winner, besting 12 other Bossing awardees, chosen from among 200
nominees. I was told that during the awards night, in the middle of the
program as others received their awards, she noticed her name wasn’t
being called. She turned to her companions and shyly commented,
“Sigurado ba kayo kasama ako dito?” Despite literally having gone from
rags to riches, Nanay Coring has remained so humble. Of course, for the
finale of the MVP Bossing Awards Night, when her name was called,
everyone gave her a thunderous standing ovation. In her speech, she
shared that there really is no secret to succeeding in life, and that if
there is one, it would probably be the worst-kept secret ever.
“Everybody knows it. Ask any entrepreneur and they will almost always
tell you the same thing. Sipag at tiyaga.”
She has no
secret to her success, lasting love, or good health. Nanay Coring is 88
years of living proof that clichés like “Work hard,” “Follow your heart”
and “Enjoy what you do” are not just clichés, they are truly the keys
to living everyone’s dream: a happy and successful life.
