“I guess when we say new normal, there is nothing really normal with what we went through,” said Roberto "Bobby" Claudio Sr., chairman of Quorum Holdings Corporation, the company behind Toby's Sports.
When the pandemic was declared in March and the country was placed under strict lockdown, the country's largest store for sports and fitness was not exempted from the unprecedented challenges brought about by the health crisis.
“Fitness and health are very important. We felt that this was not being projected much. People were getting lonely, people were getting anxious. They couldn’t get out. They couldn’t trust the person beside them. They couldn’t go out running or jogging,” said Claudio.
What the management of Toby's Sports initially thought was a 30-day lockdown became three months of uncertainty, yet the company understood its role in helping people deal with the pandemic.
"We need to address the needs for people to remain fit and healthy. Our argument then was if people were fit and healthy, they would be less prone to infection," he said.
The pandemic, according to Claudio, pushed the company to "reconfigure or reinvent our operations.”
Toby’s Sports sought to recalibrate its methods of serving their customers, while ensuring the safety and security of everyone. It began offering curbside pick-ups of orders in selected store locations, opening virtual stores in Lazada and Shopee, and then coming up with online live stream sales on certain Saturdays of the month.
“If the customers could not come to Toby’s Sports, then we should be the one to bring these products to the people," he said.
"We gave options to customers. In these times of pandemic, retailing is not all about in-store but how you can serve the customer,” added Claudio, an MVP Bossing awardee.
The MVP Bossing 2020 campaign was launched by PLDT Enterprise, the B2B arm of the country’s largest integrated telecommunications company PLDT, with the theme “Rediscovery. Reinvention” to give recognition to local business owners who are overcoming the challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Jovy Hernandez, ePLDT President & CEO and SVP & Head for PLDT and Smart Enterprise Business Groups, underscored how Toby’s Sports handled the pandemic's disruptive challenges well.
“We highly commend Mr. Bobby Claudio and the rest of Toby’s Sports team for showing agility to reinvent their ways of working during the height of the pandemic. Their flexibility enabled them to deliver their products amid the challenges they faced, which highly contributed to ensuring the healthy lifestyle of Filipinos today. And we at PLDT Enterprise are committed to assist them in sustaining their growth with our technology solutions," Hernandez said.
With Toby’s Sports having successfully made the pivot, Claudio said business owners must continue to be fearless and constantly anticipate the challenges in the market landscape in order to thrive in the future.
“Fearlessness is necessary today. It’s not about recklessness or being too aggressive. It’s about being an optimist," he said.
"Leaders, especially our bossings, have exercised this optimism in being able to pursue this business. We need to expect that these changes will be the new normal and these changes will be the future. It is imperative that the leaders of any business remain optimists, and plot the course where the company wants to go,” Claudio added.