Making a Splash felt around the world

By: Tina Arceo-Dumlao
Philippine Daily Inquirer
9:02 pm | Saturday, August 13th, 2011

ROLANDO and Rosalinda Hortaleza

Splash Corp., the leading personal care product manufacturer in the Philippines, is running out of goals to accomplish in the Philippines.

It is already the biggest in its sector and is making aggressive moves to grab market share in other markets, such as the food sector through its recent acquisition of 80 percent of Barrio Manufacturing Corp. for over P472 million, and direct selling through Splash Direct Selling.

But then, there’s the rest of the world, and that’s where Splash Corporation management headed by Rolando B. Hortaleza is turning its more of its attention and resources to, mindful of the immense growth opportunities that other markets offer companies brave enough to venture outside their home court.

Hortaleza, chairman and CEO of Splash Corp., tells SundayBiz in an interview in Splash’s new corporate headquarters in the Bonifacio Global City that he believes that Splash is ready to conquer more foreign shores because it has extensive experience operating in a highly competitive market such as the Philippines.

He adds that the presence of millions of Filipinos working and living overseas provides Splash, who made famous the Skinwhite line of whitening products, a ready market for personal care products, packaged Filipino food and nutritional supplements.

Going abroad, Hortaleza says, is the next step in the evolution of the billion-peso company that he and his wife, Rosalinda, started together 20 years ago.

“We already have the economies of scale and we have the technology to continuously develop new products, not just here but also for abroad,” says Hortaleza, “We are looking into distributing personal care products as well as food and home care products.”

Hortaleza stresses that some enterprising entrepreneurs have actually been distributing Splash products in other markets, such as the Middle East and the United States where there are huge OFW or immigrant Filipino populations.

But now that the company is seeing the bright expansion prospects for itself, Splash is taking the overseas markets more seriously to see how it can take advantage of the markets rapidly opening up to accommodate high quality yet affordable products.

According to Hortaleza, Splash will not have a uniform expansion approach as each country presents different challenges and opportunities. Markets are also different, thus the strategy is to enter each market with different sets of products.

The way it will enter these markets will also be dictated by legal and market structures. It may, for example, consider forging joint ventures with local firms in some countries to get its feet wet. In others, it may go ahead and put up a wholly owned subsidiary and take on the growth challenge alone.

Hortaleza also says that while Splash is taking on a more aggressive approach, its appetite is also tempered by the knowledge that expanding overseas is something new for the company that has earned its revenues almost exclusively from sales in the Philippines.

“We realize that this is something really new to us, but we are optimistic,” he says.

Going for Splash is its long experience in the manufacturing and retail sector in the Philippines as well as distribution relationships forged over the past 20 years. As it shifts from personal care manufacturing to the fast moving consumer goods business, it is confident that it has what it takes to make it just as big in other countries.

Splash products, particularly the best-selling whitening and hair care products, are currently available in Southeast Asia, Middle East and Africa.

Hortaleza says that by bringing Splash to other countries, it contributes to the campaign to show the world how globally competitive the Philippines really is.