Brands We Don’t See Anymore
by Oliver Carlos
My grandfather Tomas Castillo, Sr., being a natural-born historian, was a very organized man. He had this habit of scribbling dates on everything in the house, including the house itself! If you would take a tour of our ancestral house, you would know when the appliances and furniture were bought, and when the house was built. In his bedroom, he kept boxes of old photographs. Some were precious pre-war pictures. My Dad inherited those boxes of antique photos, and one day, he showed them off to me.
Aside from the old black-and-white photos, I discovered that the box itself was antique! It’s also as precious and priceless as the photographs it contained. The box had a label: Planet brand, Hilo de Escosia. It also had some Chinese characters all over. My Dad said that that brand was a very famous “sando” brand long time ago. Men would buy them and wear them inside their dress shirts or polo shirts as we call them in the Philippines. Hilo de Escosia means Scottish thread, so this product was made from the finest materials, and the quality must be really good. Planet must be a Scottish company based in Hong Kong, which was a colony of Great Britain (old name of the United Kingdom) at that time. That could explain the presence of Chinese characters on the box.
Now it makes sense. My grandparents used to own a dry goods store in Manila before and right after World War 2. The box that Tomas used to keep his photo collection must have come from their store. Planet brand sandos must be one of the best-selling products in his business!
My Dad said that this brand is already extinct now. A quick research on the internet showed at least a couple of clothing companies carry the band “Planet,” but they had different logos and specific lines of products. One specializes on girls’ summer wear, while the other on coats. I don’t think any of them are direct descendants of the old Planet brand.
Many of yesteryears’ brands are no longer existing today. When I was a little boy, I used to drink milk with the brand name KLIM, that’s milk spelled backwards. The candies that I used to enjoy back then were White Rabbit, with its edible wrapper; Bazooka Bubble Gum, with a free mini comic strip, and Benson, with its delicious choco filling. There were also softdrinks I don’t see anymore like Mello Yello, Mirinda, and Pop Cola. Among sportswear, I used to covet a pair of Grosby basketball shoes.
A friend told me that the lifespan of businesses is generally short. Very few ones are long-running. He explained it using stats. He said that only 10% of business start-ups would still be around a decade later. That means that if 10 businesses would open today, nine of them will close shop along the way, and only one of them would still be doing business 10 years from now. I guess I was a victim of this, I belonged to the 90% which closed shops. I used to sell guitars in the 1990s and basketball jerseys in the 2000s. But both of those businesses quickly evaporated.
Business is indeed very volatile. You’ll never know what lies ahead. Income or monthly sales can fluctuate or rise unexpectedly. I learned that one really needed to pray hard and depend on God, and acknowledge him for all the success one would reap. James 4:13–15 (ICB) explains this:
“Some of you say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to some city. We will stay there a year, do business, and make money.’ But you do not know what will happen tomorrow! Your life is like a mist. You can see it for a short time, but then it goes away. So you should say, ‘If the Lord wants, we will live and do this or that.’”
Today, Blog is Life would like to pray for all of you dear readers who have businesses. I pray that God will bless you abundantly now and in the many years ahead. God bless the work of your hands, and may you enjoy the fruits of your labor.
