Success in any language

When you ask an executive what separates their company from the competition, you can generally expect answers relating to leadership, technology, customer service or research and development.

But for the Chair of the Lamoiyan Corporation, Cecilio Pedro, the secret lies in a remarkable hiring strategy and internal social justice focus.

“We are uniquely different because we focus our attention on helping the hearing impaired,” he tells The CEO Magazine.

“I have been involved with the hearing impaired for the past 40 years. I have colleagues who provide sign language education to teach the hearing impaired to become teachers to deaf people.”

The decision to encourage hearing-impaired applicants to work for Lamoiyan Corporation has resulted in the majority of the workforce being deaf or hard of hearing.

“They use sign language, and we also reach them by teaching our non-deaf supervisors and staff to learn sign language,” Pedro explains.

“So this is certainly a point of difference, and this is what I have been pushing and promoting within the community – that businesses should reach out to people with disabilities.”

Putting people first

As a family-led producer of hygiene and household cleaning products, Lamoiyan Corporation places immense value on its people.

“The most important asset of any organization is always its people,” Pedro enthuses.

“We pay a lot of attention to providing for our employees. That is very crucial, very important. Many entrepreneurs believe that the way to cut costs is to lay off people, but I don’t believe in this.

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“Working with Lamoiyan as a business partner for over 30 years has been truly rewarding. Everyone – from the owners to each employee – is loyal, supportive and highly professional. The integrity and collaborative spirit of the team at Lamoiyan have helped build a strong, lasting partnership that we deeply value. We look forward to continuing this successful relationship for many more years.” – Robert L Yam, President, Printwell

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“The way to move forward for us is efficiency and productivity. Cutting our employees or cutting salaries is something we abhor, something we don’t do.

“Considering that we have so many hearing-impaired staff in the company, the message we communicate is, we ought to be responsible not just internally, but also to our external environment.”

Sustainable focus

Environmental sustainability is another key pillar of Pedro’s leadership.

“We have to take care of the environment; we are actively involved in preservation,” he explains. “We have to make sure that the premises outside and inside are maintained and clean.

“We regularly take our employees out to plant trees in different parts of the country. Our rivers are so polluted, so we have to teach our community not to pollute and not to throw their garbage into the rivers.”

Pedro emphasizes the importance of helping the community and the environment at the same time.

“Not just for us, but for generations to come,” he stresses. “Those messages for me are so much more important than just making money and selling products.”

An innovative pivot

But selling its products is still the focus, too. Having started as a manufacturer of toothpaste tubes, Pedro pivoted to making his own toothpaste when plastic laminated tubes began to replace the aluminum tubes he had been producing for Colgate and Unilever.

Expansion followed into products such as dishwashing liquid, soaps and shampoos. And the next push will be further into cosmetics, he reveals.

“Marketing is the biggest challenge right now,” he acknowledges. “What is the best way to market your products? How do you convince your consumers to use your products?

“Now, more and more, we’ll be focused on non-traditional media. That will be the key moving forward, being able to connect and sell to the Millennials.”

Pedro boasts strong relationships with his key distributors and suppliers, such as Printwell, having built loyalty and trust over many years.

By living up to his core values – social responsibility, perseverance, integrity, respect and teamwork – which he refers to through the acronym SPIRIT, he has established a reputation as a man of his word.

“Respect is always earned, it’s not given. The respect of the consumer is very important,” he insists.

“Why do they respect you? Because of what you’re doing? Because of what your product is contributing? That, for us, is a very, very important ingredient for any success we may have as a company.

“You have to respect others, whether it’s your staff, your consumers or your partners, before they will respect you.”