British businessman blazes trail in helping Pinoys

Sunday, August 14, 2011

ONCE this businessman talks about his love for the Philippines, he puts many others to shame. That is because he is British.

This is what happened when Dylan Wilk, vice president of Gandang Kalikasan Inc., which distributes Human Nature products, told businessmen at the One Cebu Business and Sustainability Summit how he gave up his millionaire’s lifestyle in London to develop a company that sells all Philippine-made products.

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Once the ninth richest man in the United Kingdom before he turned 30, Wilk said driving the fanciest cars and living in the best hotels did not make him happy.

A trip to the Philippines and interactions with the Gawad Kalinga Foundation made him realize what he wanted to do and it did not involve making himself even richer.

Livelihood

In November 2008, he started Gandang Kalikasan, a social enterprise, with his Filipina wife and sister-in-law, to produce natural, Philippine-made personal care products under the brand Human Nature.

It aimed to provide livelihood for Gawad Kalinga villages and other poor communities by producing the raw materials for Human Nature products.

Today, the brand has 20 branches nationwide and offices in the USA. It has also turned out more than 300 products in two years.

Rather than pay for the lowest possible price, Wilk said he felt it would help farmers if they earned enough for all their efforts. Instead of paying them P10 per kilo for their passionfruit oil, Wilk said they are now buying it at P3,000 per kilo in hopes of uplifting the lives of the farmers.

Aside from that, Wilk decided to give the profits of the first three months to them so they can pay for equipment needed to extract the oil from the passionfruit, an ingredient he used in Human Nature lipstick.

Taxes

Wilk prides his products as being pro-poor, pro-Filipino and pro-environment.

His passion for helping the poor comes from his humble beginnings. Still, he felt lucky that his government used taxes to send people like him to school.

“Every time you bought British products, the profit went to the country. And that sent me to school,” he told the audience. “So, thank you.”

Having come from a poor family, Wilk said he felt it was payback time for him, and he wanted to optimize profit by involving the poor in his enterprise.

When banks would not loan him money, he was given a £2,500 loan by The Prince’s Trust to start his business Gameplay, which sold computer games.

When he turned 25, the company was listed on the London Stock Exchange and he became the youngest director of a public company in the UK.

While the company still remains, Wilk ssaid he is no longer involved in it, as he continues to live in the Philippines developing Human Nature.

He admitted that most entrepreneurs have been taught to maximize profit while paying suppliers very low. Wilk said he decided to change that.

Wilk said that even if it meant spending more for packaging, he decided to seek services from a local business to do the packaging for his products.

“For our country to change, Philippine business has to love this country, too. We should all start to think that made in the Philippines should be the best. It should mean something to the world,” Wilk said.

“God will bless our business if we learn to love the poor.”