WBW 42: There's No Such Thing as an Easy, Overnight Success part 1 of 2 with York Vitangcol

Nothing could be spookier, more difficult and deathly boring than running a family business - what more a family mortuary business. Hearses, the  "bata ka lang" attitude, morgues, inevitable family drama – these are enough to send shivers down the spine of any ordinary mortal. Fortunately, York Vitangcol felt that there was a need to not only revolutionize the funeral industry, but also put his faith in a family business entrenched with bad habits. And so with patience and perseverance, he did what had to be done - injecting modern management concepts transforming what used to be scattered businesses into the first, fully-integrated “deathcare” company in the country.

Who is York Vitangcol?

York Vitangcol is the President an CEO of the St. Peter Group of Companies and the Chairman of the Board of St. Peter Life Plan Inc. The St. Peter Group of Companies is the first and only fully-integrated “deathcare”s company in the Philippines today – covering life plans, memorial chapels, casket factories, and crematoriums.

He graduated from the University of the Philippines, where he was a varsity basketball player for the UP Fighting Maroons. He also graduated from the Strategic Business Economics Program of the University of Asia and the Pacific. He worked his way up in the family business, while advocating radical changes and innovations to transform what used to be a conservative and conventional memorial service business into an integrated, synergistic and progressive one – implementing various innovations, among the more interesting are free wifi in chapels, and free online viewing service of wakes and funerals.

Amidst his very disciplined and professional disposition, he still manages to crack some well-punned tacky jokes, which we should admit, are actually very funny.

Show notes:

My grandfather, the founder of our company, believes in the following:

• Hindi bubukol sa katawan ang pagod.
• Huwag manloloko ng tao.
• Kapwa muna bago sarili.
• Nawa’y guminhawa ang buhay ng bawat St. Peterian nang dahil sa St. Peter.

The whole family was in the funeral-mortuary business...

• Not because of strategic planning, but because of sibling rivalry and circumstances.
  
• Everyone in the family wanted to please the father, the chairman of the board and founder of the original company, that everyone did business on their own and protected their own interests.
• No synergy, no cooperation, no innovations, no vision and mission, no shared values, only competition between siblings. This happened for 28 years – from 1970 to 1998.

How did change happen?

• One employee of St. Peter Life Plans rose through the ranks and became COO, but he became corrupt and greedy. He abused the powers of being COO.
  
• In 1998, another “COO” came in – this time, it was the Child of the Owner. This Child of the Owner challenged the COO and questioned everything he did. The COO resigned for 10 times, but my mom, then the president of the company, rejected all his resignations, because my mom trusted him so much.
• Fortunately, on the 11th time, she accepted his resignation. It was then that the Child of the Owner became the real COO, chief operating officer. It was also then that he started losing his hair - York.
• His first order of business was to bring in the other family businesses, as well as bring in professional managers.
  
• It took 31 years before this happened. We realized that our company was overpopulated, and we had to save the sinking ship by retrenching 1,500 people – otherwise, everyone would have perished. That was a very difficult stage in the history of St. Peter Life Plans and Chapels.

The difficult era

• Those who were retrenched were offered alternative jobs.
  
• But I was receiving death threats for breakfast, lunch, dinner and even midnight snack.
  
• But I did not budge because I was focused on the objective – to synergize our companies because it was necessary to create economies of scale.
  
• This was the dream of our founder. It’s good that there’s an inherent goodness in people that actually stops people from doing what they threatened me they were going to do.

The turnaround

• That was also the time that we first crafted our vision, mission and values.
  
• From just eight chapels in 1998; now, in 2009, have 230 chapels.
  
• Our target is to have 310 chapels in 2010.
  
• In 1998, we rendered 5,000 memorial services. In 2009, we did 6,000 – per month. People are really dying to go to us!
• Eventually, we created support segments related to the core business. We analyzed what we needed to do, to achieve the success that we wanted.
• Apart from the life plans and the chapels, we added a crematorium, a team that managed the fleet of hearses and utility vans, casket distribution, lighting fixtures. We consolidated our casket factories into one. We put up an embalming school. All our embalmers and funeral make-up artists are licensed. This is necessary. You don’t want the dead to look dead. They have to look alive!

Click here for WBW 42 part 2 of 2 with York Vitangcol