ABOUT NONPAREIL

With sheer guts and clear vision, Roland Quiambao took the leap of faith leaving a steady-paying  job to establish Nonpareil International Freight and Cargo Services Incorporated in 1990.

“Nonpareil”  is a French word that means “having no equal.”  Taking it one step further the company redefine it to mean ‘beyond compare.’

When Roland founded Nonpareil with his wife Belen, his vision was for the company to go exclusively on customs clearance  and international freight forwarding because of his work experience. The domestic forwarding, which is the backbone of the company now, came in later.

Mrs. Quiambao explains that domestic forwarding  kicked off the company as she,  along with her brother Jovic Pellosis, who is now VP for Domestic Operations, took on the odd jobs that other bigger companies simply too small.

Beginnings

With just five employees, Nonpareil thrive because Quiambao know the business so well. While Belen had strong connections and experience in domestic forwarding, she also handled the administrative work while Roland looked after the operations. The couple never let opportunities go by without trying.

Belen knows a good deal when she encounters one. Four years into the business, she stumbled upon a company that needs domestic forwarding services. With combined decades of experience and faith in themselves, they took on the job for a leading telecommunications company, which remains their client up to now.

Because it wasn’t a planned investment, Nonpareil had to improvise and the Quiambao’s homes serve as a warehouse. Belen also did her business calls at home -most of the time at the bathroom- because their neighborhood back then was not an ideal environment to do business transaction over the phone.

“The determination was there,” Belen says. “I felt that there is something for us in the domestic market.”  That something was delivering construction materials too highly sensitive and communication equipment that was to become the cellular phone backbone of the country.

“We’ve delivered over 5,000 of the 7,000 sites set up In the country then,” proudly narrates Belen. “it was an achievement for a company of our size.”

It was pure business sense and as Belen puts it, “Nonpareil thrive when the telecom industry also thrived.”

CHALLENGES

No business is successful without challenges. “But we are determined Roland says. A freight forwarding company needs warehouses and trucks to deliver the goods. They may not have the numbers back then, but Nonpareil made sure to deliver on their promises for what ever resources they have.

Roland related an incident many years earlier when he had fork out tens of thousand of pesos – a  kingly sum that time  - to hire a crane to dislodge a container van stuck in a muddy portion of the pier. But that wasn’t the biggest blow in the business. In the early 2000, a setback significantly reduced revenues as a big account slowed down for a while.

However , Roland and Belen are not the type who take things  sitting down. “ I saw that it was an opportunity for expansion. And I began by looking for other accounts,” she says. “So, I decided to make random calls to companies I found on the yellow pages.”

Nonpareil got an account from a leading telecom equipment company and again remains a client now. Roland believes Nonpareil impressive track record is its biggest edge over competitions. “We are able to build a reputation of a company that delivers and is reliable,” he says. “I think, that is just one of the reasons we are able to keep clients for decades.”

Nonpareil keeps itself grounded and the owners are very much hands on. It is one of the distinguishing marks of the company. They are able to make decisions right there and then and fast transaction are important for customers. Customers need people who could easily make up their mind.

​