By Marilou A. Santos
Citrus Alley, owned by a young entrepreneur, Amante Esguerra, started with a homemade lemonade recipe back in 2013. After a trip abroad, the owner saw the potential of a freshly-squeezed lemonade juice stand as a stand-alone business. With the help of friends, and discussing tasting experiments for dinners, they tried numerous concoctions to perfect the taste of their product. They saw that lemon is the only fruit that was being marketed at the time, hence they came up with the idea of introducing other well-known citrus fruits as flavor bases. The original flavors were freshly squeezed lemon, lime and orange.
Mr. Esguerra is single, a graduate of Bachelor of Science in Nursing and formerly worked in Eduardo L. Joson Memorial Hospital. He resigned eventually to fully manage their businesses which were a pharmacy (drug store and medical equipment’s) and Citrus Alley.
From its only outlet then at SM Megacenter in Cabanatuan City, it now has five (5) more branches located in SM City, Waltermart- Cabanatuan City and Talavera, NE Pacific Mall and the latest at the Citymall in Sta. Rosa. The owner was a participant of the DTI’s SME Roving Academy before becoming one of the Mentees in the Batch 1 of the Kapatid Mentor ME (KMME) Program in 2017.
One time, while looking for an oxygen tank, Mr. Esguerra met some DTI Associates. He was introduced to the technical assistance which DTI provides to businesses. Since then, capability building activities and technical assistance were given to him in terms of training and consultancy. His enthusiasm to learn more and being a promising entrepreneur earned him a slot in the KMME program, a series of free mentoring sessions provided by experts.
Mr. Esguerra graduated from KMME batch 1. The learning gained from the different business modules were implemented and resulted to better customer service and operation. In addition, increase in income was achieved with better management approaches particularly managing the human resources, storage and finance. Marketing strategy such as the use of e-commerce was likewise done and helped achieved better results for the business. According to him, he learned to work harder and never give up. He also learned to avoid micro managing, empowering the staff and apply delegation, work harmoniously with the staff, customer, and suppliers. Other lessons he applied because of the sessions were for him not be afraid to seek and ask assistance and deploy continuous research and development for product innovation.
At present, Mr. Esguerra is working on offering his business for franchise.
During the KMME batch 2 launched on March 7, 2018, Mr. Esguerra was one among three successful entrepreneurs who shared their journey to success during the Inspirational Forum.