Rey Beltran | ExecutiveChronicles.com
Vic Puyat, one of Senator Gil J. Puyat sons, retired in 1992. But for someone like him, he cannot imagine himself doing nothing. So he was still on the lookout for something to do. 65, after all, is still a young age to be idle. So it was around this time when one Fil-Am Vic recruited for Loyola Memorial talked him into a fantastic product that he might be interested in.
[Read more: Finding a Pot of Gold at the End of the Rainbow: An interview with Vic G. Puyat]
So a meeting was arranged between Vic and the vice-president of this fantastic product. “From Michigan, the guy brings the fantastic product with him, goes to our apartment in San Francisco where I and my wife were staying with my brother and his wife… he goes there, knocks on the door…” And Vic starts to lively narrate every detail of that momentous meeting as if it just happened yesterday.
“Hi! Tony Alexander from Rainbow!”
“Oh, okay. We were expecting you. Please come in,” Vic said. After the niceties, I asked, “What do you have with you?”
“Oh this is the Rainbow,” Tony said with pride.
“Would you like to show us …”
“Sure,” Tony answered enthusiastically. “That’s the reason why I’m here…to show it to you!”
So my brother, who’s very finicky with cleanliness, has a problem. His wall-to-wall carpeting has dirt marks. And when the demo was being done by Tony Alexander from Rainbow, my brother said, “Mr. Alexander, do you see those dirt marks? I’ve tried all kinds of cleaning solutions to try to get it out but it doesn’t work. Can you take that out? If you can, that machine ain’t leaving this place.”
“Well, let’s see,” Tony said. So he scrubbed and did the demo and all the dirt marks were gone. So he sold the Rainbow that he brought with him. My brother paid for it. Then I told him. “I’m impressed. Can I do business with you in the Philippines?”
“That’s the reason I’m here!”
“How do we get going? Can you order a 20-footer? How much would it cost? How many it will contain?” “About 150 units.”
I knew that this guy from America who told me about Rainbow, I talked to him, and I said, “Can you start selling it in the Philippines?”
“Sure, I can!” So I was sure I have somebody who knew how to sell it. So I said, “Deal.” And we sold 150 units in two months’ time. So I was their rising star in the US.
But not everything was rosy. “We could not buy dollars because of economics during Marcos’ time. That was the time we could not buy dollars. So I told Rainbow that I have to stop operations in the Philippines because I can’t get dollars to buy machines. But I don’t plan to stop. I’ll go to Singapore and I will start the Singapore business there.”
This kind of resiliency gave birth to Rainbow in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Guam. “I am considered the grandfather of Rainbow in Southeast Asia because I handled the ASEAN area.”
Aside from Rainbow Cleaning System, Vic Puyat brought to the Philippines Roto-Rooter, a plumbing service company. Roto-Rooter Philippines specializes in preventive maintenance for restaurants, fast-food outlets, condominiums and hotels. In this way, trap waste will be disposed properly in an ecologically friendly way reducing further health and environmental hazard.
