Sy’s company began as a shoe store in 1948. Today, SM Investments is an empire that features SM Retail, which runs the country’s largest supermarket and department store chains; SM Prime Holdings, the most important mall operator; and BDO Unibank. In a rustic of greater than 105 million people, his malls attract a mean of three.5 million customers a day.
“It is no exaggeration to consider Sy the father of Philippine retail,” said Astro del Castillo, managing director of First Grade Finance. “His grocery stores, department stores and shopping malls introduced the one-stop-shop concept to the country, and his malls changed not only the practice of retailing but also lifestyles.”
Sy amassed his wealth against a backdrop of unstable governments, political corruption and economic recession, especially the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98. He continued to expand his empire with recent shopping malls and a bank that eventually became the country’s largest by assets.
The group currently manages 62 department shops, 56 supermarkets, a network of 194 SaveMore grocery stores and 50 hypermarkets.
Henry Sy was born within the southeastern Chinese city of Xiamen, in Fujian Province. He emigrated to the Philippines at age 12 and commenced selling rice, sardines and soap at his father’s corner store in Manila in 1936.
“Our shop was so small it didn’t have a back room or a second floor, so after closing time, late at night, we would sleep on the counter,” he said This Philippine Star newspaper from 2006.
The store was burned down and looted during World War II, so Sy was asked to sell goods to assist the family survive, in response to Sy-Coson, the eldest of six children.
After the war, he sold shoes imported by American soldiers and opened a shoe store, which later, in 1958, gave him the premise for establishing ShoeMart – the most important chain within the country and the primary air-conditioned shoe store within the Philippines.
Every time the country falls right into a crisis, I believe and judge what’s one of the simplest ways
After opening six shoe stores, he diversified into clothing and consumer goods because shoe manufacturers were unable to satisfy his demand for larger quantities.
In 1972, Sy opened his first department store, two months after President Ferdinand Marcos imposed martial law within the country. Marcos was ousted from power by a military and civilian rebellion in 1986.
Sy entered the true estate development business in 1974, establishing Multi-Realty Development, an organization that built high-rise residential towers and townhouses in prime areas of Makati, Metro Manila.
Sy opened his first mall in 1985, when the economy was in its worst post-war slump. In the late Eighties and early Nineties, power outages, cement shortages and a series of coup attempts that dogged the federal government of Corazon Aquino didn’t stop Sy from opening more malls.
In 1994, he founded SM Prime to amass existing shopping malls and land for brand new developments from his group firms. That same yr, he raised about 6 billion pesos, about $220 million on the time, in an initial public offering.
Mall of Asia, as Sy’s flagship mall is thought, opened in 2006 with an Olympic-size ice rink, an eight-story movie screen and 800 stores. The $124 million mall was SM Prime’s twenty fifth mall and the most important shopping complex within the country on the time.
SM Investments, which raised $532 million in a 2005 IPO, owns shares in firms that, along with Melco Crown Entertainment, built a resort and casino in Manila.
SM Prime now has 72 malls within the Philippines, making it the most important mall operator within the Southeast Asian country. The company bought three Sy malls in China in 2008 and has since built 4 more there, in response to its website.
“If I had the possibility, I’d do it again,” Sy said in a July 2009 interview. “Every time the country is in crisis, I believe and judge where best to go. We all the time have to consider ways to beat these limitations.”
Additional information: Agence France-Presse
This article was published within the print edition of the South China Morning Post newspaper under the title: From a penniless migrant to a Filipino retail tycoon
