by Lorie Ann A. Cascaro
To become a doctor was supposed to be his ultimate direction in life. But after graduating with a bachelor’s degree in Zoology from the Far Eastern University, Manila, in 1974, he returned to Davao City to unfold his future in business.
“It was not really my motive to pursue the practice of medicine,” Antonio “Tony Boy” S. Domingo, president of the Santos Land Development Corporation, said. When he came home, he immediately plunged into managing the Mahusay Box Factory, a family business, despite having had no formal training in business management.
Later, he left to manage another family business, the Instant Marketing firm, which involved industrial products. Four years later, in 1978, an economic crisis hit the country and he lost the company. Losing Instant Marketing was Domingo’s first real lesson in business, something he had not learned in school.
“But I did learn the ability to adapt to sudden change. Kung alam mo na hindi na pwede at ipinipilit mo pa, lalo kang lulubog. By the time na binitiwan mo na, wala na. Lala na (When you feel that your business is going down but still insist on pursuing it, it will sink even faster until you realize that you have nothing left.” he said.
“When I married in 1979, I was managing my marketing company which eventually closed down,” he said. That did not deter him, though. Domingo instead turned his attention to developing Santos Land Development Corporation’s bangus (milkfish) fishpond in Banay-Banay, Davao Oriental, catering to the Davao market.
But that was not the end of his long odyssey. Domingo later found himself managing the Davao Gulf Lumber Corporation, the flagship company among his family’s businesses, which exported logs to Japan. At first, he was its purchasing manager, then he eventually became its plant manager.
But when the log ban caught up with the company it had nothing to export. This time he focused on the family’s Iluminada Farms, Inc. at Bago Gallera, Talomo, Davao City. The poultry business distributed table eggs in some parts in Northern and Southern Mindanao, this time Domingo stuck it out there for the next 20 years as chairman of the Board.
Domingo was also an incorporator of the Honda Cars Davao, Inc., since 1993 when he helped his close friend Lorenzo “Jun” Angbuete, Jr. in organizing it.
Then in the year 2000, he was appointed president of Santos Land, which was at the time on the brink of bankruptcy. But, with hard work, dynamism and faith in God, he, together with his team, was able to make business afloat and eventually turnaround. In 2008, he was elected as a board of director and eventually elected as the chairman of the Board. In 2009, he was re-elected as the president of Santos Land Development Corporation when real estate property business was beginning to boom in Davao City.
It took him sometime to learn the tricks of the business, but when he did, there was no stopping Domingo.
“When I was young, I had the tendency to be happy-go-lucky. I quickly spent whatever I earned. But, after knowing failure, I realized the importance of being focused on the business at hand. One has to be work hard, and one’s word is important in business. It’s difficult enough to earn other people’s respect; I had to learn to respect them,” he said.
Listening to others’ wisdom is his key to success. He learned to listen to others upon realizing that even the most insignificant person may know something that one can learn from. With his constant interaction and sharing of ideas with Estela Aguilos, the marketing head who had been with Santos Land since 1976—five years after it was established by Domingo’s grandparents, Iluminada and Nicolas Santos— he was able recover former stability of Santos Land.
Blue Ocean Strategy, as Aguilos and Domingo called it, was implemented to recover the loss of the waning company. It was a radical market shift—from selling low-cost houses to medium size units. “We started from zero and did re-engineering,” Domingo said.
The ability to think beyond and take the risk had led him into a wonderful discovery. No one believed in his ideas at the time. His people were asking how come he would raise the price of their properties when those of other players were going down.
“I had to do it alone. We had no choice left. I instructed the designers on what to do; selected the hardware and other materials and thought of a particular market,” he said. The radical change was from low-cost housing with no down payment and payable in ten years, to medium-size with 50 percent down payment and the balance payable in three years.
It sounded impossible. But, in six months, they were able to sell one. When another house was sold, another two were built. When both were fully paid for in cash, four other houses were built, and then eight were added, so forth and so on.
Santos Land began to recover in 2003. Domingo dispensed other assets to pay off loans; until such time that the company was left with assets enough for it to handle and pay for all outstanding loans. “The company is vibrant again and we are now focusing on developing three kinds of markets—low, middle and high,” he said.
“We are now careful about what we’re doing,” he said, adding that while in the past, they were only after quantity, today they focus on the quality of their properties. Santos Land is not merely selling lands, it builds communities,” he said.
Having 25 sales directors, with 20 agents each, Santos Land raised its profits several fold from its trying times. As Aguilos puts it figuratively, before, they could only travel to Asia, but nowadays, they can go to Europe and America.
Without considering the big players as competitors, Domingo said they do not have the same niche market although they are doing the same thing—building houses. Believing in the booming real estate business, he said, “As the population grows and the country’s economy develops, the purchasing power of the middle class people will rise. Thus, the middle income market also grows.”
For this career man and entrepreneur at the same time, planning is also very important. For one’s business to grow, he or she has to go out and explore untapped markets, he said. Hence, in the next five years, Santos Land will expand to Tagum City and General Santos City.
Getting the right people—professionals at that—and allotting money to train them has been the company’s practice in its endeavor to professionalize. “This is one reason for the success of our family corporation,” Domingo said.
As a young man, Domingo gave up everything for the company at the expense of his family. But, on growing old, his family has become more important to him. After all his hardships, he has been able to keep the balance between his family and business-slash-career.
During vacations, Domingo travels overseas with his wife, Emily, and children— Paolo, architect in Santos Land, Angie, senior manager in a call center in the city, with her two kids (Mia & Matthew) and Honey who is in high school.
