Much has been written about the 57-year-old history of legacy company Mapecon, more formally known as The Manila Pest Control Company, owned and established by innovator and entomologist Gonzalo Catan, Jr.
With the aim of formulating safe and effective pesticides for wide-ranging irritants, Catan successfully turned his brainchild into a byword when it comes to pest control in the Philippines.
But what is hardly known about the Mapecon story, according to the man behind the proudly homegrown brand, is that it was actually born not solely of practical needs, but more compellingly out of love.
In this sit-down interview with The Sunday Times Magazine, Gonzalo Catan, Jr. recalls anew his tale of success, but, for the first time, talks less about business and more about the emotions that pushed his company to the top of its industry.
An innovator’s beginnings
Born in 1936 to a public school principal and a full-time homemaker in Valencia, Negros Oriental, Catan, the eldest of five children, had always been a sensitive and intuitive boy. He always knew his family’s finances were limited growing up, and to this very day, is grateful for his parents’ sacrifices to send them to school.
“My family has always been good and close-knit, but from the start, I knew we had money problems. I would pity my parents whenever they had to sell land in order to pay the tuition fee for me and my siblings,” he revealed to The Sunday Times Magazine
The situation explains why he chose not to follow in his father’s footsteps in education, with Catan elucidating, “Because I was aware there’s no money there. Unlike educators nowadays who are given competitive packages, teaching was not a profitable profession during my father’s time.”
But as with most adversities, an opportunity emerged for the young Catan to learn the value of hard work and perseverance from his life’s greatest examples.
He studied hard in order not to waste his parents’ valuable sacrifice for their education, and further found drive and inspiration when he joined a global network youth of organizations called the 4-H Club, which at that time had just opened up in the Philippines.
Growing a green thumb
Only 14 years old when he became an active member of the club, he benefited from its objective to develop a young person’s four H’s: the head, heart, hands and health.
Specifically, the young members of 4-H complete hands-on projects in areas like health, science, citizenship, and, in the case of Catan, agriculture, in a positive environment where they receive guidance from adult mentors.
Soon, the young Catan found himself learning about backyard gardening—what to plant, how to plant, and how to make the most of such a project.
“I had a small area of 500-square meters to work with and it was there I started to grow vegetables, which I later sold to the cafeteria of Silliman University in nearby Dumaguate City,” recalled the budding green thumbed entrepreneur.
With his earnings, he gave his parents one less obligation to fend for and put himself to school, while turning over whatever amount of money he had left to help the rest of the family.
Ultimately, his humble vegetable patch earned him enough funds to study at the very university where he sold his produce, and became an “Agriculture associate.”
Seeing his potential, the 4-H Club eventually gave Catan a scholarship at University of the Philippines-Los Baños’ College of Agriculture, where he majored in Entomology with a minor in Chemistry and Plant Pathology.
“I chose the course because when I was gardening for my 4-H project, I inevitably encountered pests attacking my plants. They were my biggest problem at that time so it made sense that I go into Entomology because I wanted to figure out what I could do to solve it,” he explained.
Graduating in 1959, Catan brought his degree to compete in a 4-H contest in his field of expertise, which won him an opportunity of a lifetime as an International Farm Youth Exchange scholar.
Ever thirsty for knowledge, Catan was like a sponge as he visited and observed various farms in the United States as well as several pest control companies, which drew from him no less than 19 feasibility studies.
“These studies ranged from beekeeping to tomato water culture to franchising,” he recounted.
By the time he returned to the Philippines, he specifically chose to pursue his ideas in pest control as a career and business venture.
Love at first sight
“Now this is where the love part comes in, and this is a story only a few have known until this interview,” Catan, now a strong and healthy octogenarian, declared with a twinkle in his eye.
“In talking about my experience as an exchange scholar, I’ve often skipped the part where I stayed with three different families that ‘adopted’ me during my stay in the United States,” he continued. “The one in Vermont was most special to me up to now, because it was in staying with that family that I met my would-be-wife.”
The 16-year-old daughter of the farming family that took Catan had stolen his heart at first sight.
“She was very pretty and intelligent. And wow! She could outwork me at their farm!” he laughed at the memory.
As if on cue, his former “host sister”-turned-better half joined Catan for the interview, still adorably giddy many over the story of their first meeting.
“H e stayed with us for three weeks and in that span of time, I fell in love with him already,” Nancy Russell Catan smiled sweetly. “I think it was because he was genuinely interested in what we did in the farm, working very hard to learn, and I liked that about him.”
With their whirlwind romance cut short as Catan returned to the Philippines, the next six months that ensued witnessed countless letters exchanged via snail mail, as the young lovebirds determinedly kept their relationship strong despite the distance.
“So I say Mapecon was born out of love because it was then I threw myself into building the company in order to afford a home and a comfortable life for Nancy in the Philippines,” Catan touchingly revealed.
“There was no way I could bring her over from the United States had I gone in to teaching like my father. To my mind, she’s an American and to make her stay, I had to afford the luxuries that an American is used to, even if later on, I realized she’d be happy with a simple life, making me fall even more in love with her.”
Lows and highs
With love as the greatest motivator, Catan was never discouraged by the fact that he had a sure-fire idea for a pest control company but had no capital to set it up.
“I needed to earn some money first so I took on a job as an entomologist at a company called Botica Boie, Inc.,” he continued.
Saving as much of his salary as he could, Catan kept his eye on the prize and worked through his spare time to begin testing his pesticide formulations so they would be ready once he has enough funds to go solo in business.
By the end of 1960, Catan found his winning chemical formulation, convinced it was the one to make his dream business a reality, and ultimately his life with Nancy as his wife.
And so the following year, he finally registered The Manila Pest Contol Company (Mapecon) with the Bureau of Commerce with a capital of P5,810.
“Mind you, I still kept my job at the pharmaceutical company because I still needed more funds to get Mapecon off the ground, so I had to work even harder.”
This meant reporting to work every day at Botica Boie, and spending nights until the wee hours of the morning to perfect his product for Mapecon.
Once he was ready, his marketing skills came to the fore as he gave a month’s worth of free trial to four major companies in Manila.
“I worked with a sprayer and a duster [to use my formulation] at The Manila Hotel, The Manila Times Publishing, Corp., the Jai-Alai Building and the Safari Restaurant,” pausing meaningful at the mention of the second company.
At that time, Catan recalled that existing pest control companies only had “quick-kill insecticides” that proved ineffective for sustainable pest control management.
“Mapecon ushered in an innovation wherein besides killing existing pests, say a cockroach, [the formulation] would also be effective in getting rid of smaller ones that the mother cockroach may have laid before it was killed,” he explained.
He also offered first-of-its-kind packaged service that won over the usual ‘rid-one-pest-at-a-time’ of other companies.
With these selling points, Catan was able to sign up his first four customers for year-long services, and finally gave up his day job to concentrate on Mapecon.
Employing his brother, a cousin and a friend to help him with marketing, Mapecon was headed for success, until the third guy on the list stole his growing clientele to put up his own company.
Better times
While he wanted to sue his friend, Catan knew his budding company could not afford to pay for legal expenses. Ever innovative, he sought the help of a very important client who stayed with him by the name of Don Joaquin Roces of The Manila Times.
“He believed my story and felt for me, so he generously gave me free legal assistance to pursue my erstwhile colleague’s wrong doing and gain back all of my lost clientele,” he happily narrated.
With everything put to right again, Catan was ready to reconnect with Nancy who had told him at some point she needed to concentrate on her studies and asked him to refrain from giving her any distractions.
But love should and did win in the end, for two years later, Catan bravely wrote to Nancy offering his love anew.
“He simply wrote, ‘My dearest Nancy, I cannot forget you. I love you, will you marry me’?” Nancy recalled affectionately.
“You were beyond forgetting,” Catan sweetly cut in.
Eight months after she said yes, Nancy, who had never been anywhere else in the world, flew on a plane for the first time on one-way ticket to Manila.
“When he met me at the airport, the first thing he did was put an engagement ring on my finger, and we were married five days later,” she beamed.
“Like I said, she was the inspiration for Mapecon, and she was also my lucky charm because the company grew to servicing close to 300 clients soon after we married,” the happy husband noted.
And even as another big crisis hit the company, he had the most loyal partner to help him up at every fall, resulting in a wider reach for Mapecon beyond Manila.
“Eventually we expanded our business nationwide with our first domestic branch in Cebu and even outside the Philippines, working with the Indonesian Ministry of Agriculture and the US Embassy in Indonesia, among others,” Catan imparted.
“Mr. Roces and The Manila Times actually helped me in another major problem through that time when Nancy and I almost left the Philippines to work on her parents’ farm in Vermont. In the middle of this crisis, he sent a reporter who wrote a four-page feature in The Sunday Times Magazine, a story that ran something like ‘Save Jun Catan’ and with its nationwide readership, the paper more than compensated for my big loss in an [anomalous] city-wide project. So to him and this paper, I am forever grateful.”
Finally, in April 1968, Catan incorporated Mapecon into the Manila Pest Control Company Philippines, Inc. as a closed family corporation with an authorized capital stock of P1 million, and their success story has gone on ever since.
“With love at the center of it all,” he ended.
**Sources: Eduardo Roberto’s 1969 case materials writing of The Manila Pest Control Company Philippines, Inc. for his Inter-University Program for Graduate Business Education in the Philippines.
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