A new digital marketplace has emerged, and seems to be here to stay for the long-run.
A new economy is being born. An industrious race of people forced out of their comfort zones is rising from the ashes before our very eyes. The pandemic has forced uncertainty upon us, taking job security away and shaking our future and present plans to their cores. What was once set in stone, secure and sure-fire, is for many, now totally lost. No-work, no-pay or retrenchments have given Filipinos no other recourse but to pivot and innovate in order to find a new livelihood and sources of income.
Filipinos are industrious; we are resourceful. Instagram and Facebook have become a bustling marketplace for small businesses. While some businesses and hobbyists have been selling online and while some Filipinos have been savvy with online shopping, this mode of consumption which has been a norm in first-world nations has struggled to find solid footing here. Thanks to the pandemic, the Philippines has embraced online shopping.
Operating from their homes, a great deal of entrepreneurs are selling home-made foods, re-selling beauty products, home accessories or plants among many others. E-commerce has been the go-to avenue for making a living during quarantine. Home-cooks have found their footing and along-side new tech start-ups, they have pushed the country's penchant for digital services forward.
Co-founder of the online marketplace Delidrop (which sells products from home-cooks, established food producers, and restaurant groups) Nicole Co says “We started Delidrop since we saw a window of opportunity with the online marketplace—where majority are focused on specific categories whether selling purely grocery items, fresh produce or healthy products. As consumers who constantly buy online, we want to maximise orders to cut delivery fees, so we thought of creating a platform that would have the ‘usual’ home necessities yet offer guilty pleasures of life we all miss having prior to the pandemic”. One of their biggest challenges is of course delivery, especially since we keep changing between ECQ to MECQ and GCQ. “We’re already operating with limited manpower and even have fewer staff when there’s a lockdown in their area” Nicole adds.
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There has definitely been a return to what people are passionate about. “Staying home and being on quarantine really drives you back to your core, and for us, that was food,” shares Louella Ching of Eleven Baker Street who had jumped on the sushi-bake train because she could not find a sushi-bake that they personally loved. “We wanted to incorporate uni ... something we all love. One thing led to another, and next thing we knew we were already setting up shop" Louella says cheerfully. Passion-project hobbyists have turned their side-hustles or weekend pleasures into full-on enterprises. It seems that most everyone has become a chef or a baker. Instagram is flooded with mouthwatering images of freshly made cookies, cakes, bread and, well, sushi-bake.