The success of Chinese entrepreneur Lim Tua Co

Back in 1852, setting up a liquor business in the Philippines was no easy task for Chinese immigrant Lim Tua Co.

Today, entrepreneur Olivia Limpe-Aw, president of Destileria Limtuaco & Co, continues to expand the multi-branded liquor business in the country and overseas. Limpe-Aw says Lim had a family recipe for a pioneering Chinese medicinal wine when he moved to Binondo, Manila.

Though blindsided by a different culture and an unfamiliar business territory, setting up a liquor business seemed the logical step to take. The wine that originally carried the brand name See Hok Tog became popular in the Philippines and eventually came to be known as Sioktong.

The herbal wine is distilled from more than 15 Chinese herbs that collectively promote "the balance of 'yin and yang,' the key to good health," says the company website.

Now, more than 160 years later, Destileria Limtuaco produces 30 brands of distilled spirits and alcoholic beverages in the Philippines – from whisky, rum, brandy and gin brands to vodka-based products, flavored spirits and cordials.

According to the Distilled Spirits Association of the Philippines, Destileria Limtuaco is the fourth-biggest liquor brand in the country. The privately held company employs over 250 people in two factories in Quezon city and Bulacan province.

Limpe-Aw’s father, Julius Limpe, the company's former president, encouraged her to get into the family business. She remembers doing errands in the factory during summer vacations. The business proved to be her natural environment.

"My parents tried to encourage us to go into the business ... to learn humility, understand that life is not easy, and realize how difficult life is if you don't have proper education."

After earning a degree in business economics from the University of the Philippines in 1983, she became her father's secretary. The fifth of seven children, all girls, Limpe-Aw learned the ropes of the enterprise, from human resources and production to sales and marketing.

"First, we learn by observing. Then we learn by doing. But where you really learn the business is when you have to swim on your own," Limpe-Aw says. "And this happened after the labor strike during the peak of labor unrest (in the late 1980s) in the Philippines."

The company's labor union was infiltrated by a militant group and a subsequent strike led to the closure of its factories for six months in 1989. Limpe-Aw recalibrated the strategy of the country's oldest distillery, moving its product portfolio from the mass market, which churns higher sales volume but entails bigger operational and advertising expenses, to the niche midrange market by promoting competitive brands.

Edited by Michael Thai