Bangon, Adarna,

By Emelina S. Almario

This piece is part of a series of short essays commemorating Adarna House’s 45th Anniversary. In this article, Emelina S. Almario recounts how what began as a mission to keep the company afloat became a decade-long journey of purpose—anchored in teamwork, strategic clarity, and an unwavering belief in the power of stories for children.

My initial going-in position was to move Adarna to a survival mode after what it had gone through. At the start it was always slow, calibrated growth aligned with our capacity to generate sales. The initial pressure was largely internal. When I decided to head Adarna, it enjoyed the luxury of being the biggest player in the very small world of local children’s books. No real competitors to speak of, in the local market. So even if we grew slowly, we had no fear of being outpaced by other publishers.  The situation provided Adarna and me breathing space to get our act together. 

First, I had to fix our finances. I had to prove that we were a going concern. Until I headed Adarna, I had been spared the responsibility for the bottomline. At Maryknoll College, I never even had to understand our financial statements. There was a whole finance office under a treasurer to see to it that the school was financially sustainable. As the head of the health care practice of SGV/Andersen Consulting, I had to meet pretty high revenue targets and we had monthly meetings where the performance of each partner vis-a-vis targets was displayed for all to see. But even if we did not meet our targets, we did not see how it translated into employees being laid off or the business  folding up. 

In Adarna, the connection between sales and company survival was more clearly drawn. And even more compelling than company survival was the number of employees we might have to let go if we did not generate sales. Employees whom I knew not as numbers but as names and faces.  

While financial operations may be particularly daunting to anyone running a business, the comforting truth of this part of the business is its reliance on numbers. The metrics are always clear and straightforward. And at its most basic, you just have to understand the relationship between money coming in and money going out. I learned it the hard way. 

We had one payroll period when we were P20,000.00 short and I was not in the office, attending to my other work commitments. Liza Bartolo, our finance staff, seeing the shortfall, made up for it by advancing her own money and treating what she did without any fuss or drama. For me, it was a lesson on how everyone pitches in to keep the company together. Yes, we had started to think as a team but we needed the financial steam to continue.  From then on, terms of payment took on an existential meaning for me and it became a hallmark of our financial operations.  Terms of payment became the hallmark of my initial months heading Adarna. Terms of payment of accounts receivable; terms of payment of accounts payable. How do our customers pay us and how do we pay our suppliers? And just as important, when do our customers pay us and when do we pay our suppliers? 

Next, the organization. In business models, the mantra is “structure follows strategy.” The mantra assumes that the company has resources with which to fund this structure. At that point, we had limited resources, we also had no clear strategy, no northern star to hitch our dream to. We just wanted to be a publisher of good children’s books and we were happy to continue with our business model. We had created a space, albeit small and circumscribed, but in that space, to exist was enough reason for being because there was no one else in that space. So our recruitment was always incremental and timid, adequate to meet our modest goals, every new hire a straightforward answer to a pressing short-term need. We were just one group: no layers; no division into smaller units; we moved as one.

We moved out of that mindset when we had a strategic planning workshop run by an Ateneo professor,  Louie Montalbo in Casa San Pablo in San Pablo, Laguna. It must have been in 2000 and our group was still less than 10. Until then we had not engaged in long-term planning. I had done it and was doing it for all my other workplaces but somehow, it had never been done in Adarna. Instead, our time frame was always one year. A long-term perspective was a new experience.  As we played around with this new perspective, we started to discuss our vision and our mission.  We were preparing to meet the coming decade determined to grow. Thrive, not just survive, as Adarna.

And we did. From 2000 to 2010, we transferred offices thrice, the last time to our own building at the corner of Scout Torillo and Scout Fernandez. Our sales moved from 7 to 8 digits. And our group of 7 eventually became 24,  now layered and grouped according to functions which we kept calibrating according to what we needed at the moment: product development, sales, marketing, finance, logistics, IT,  and administration. We created a working board and committees across the company.  We wanted Adarna to skilfully navigate the world of business and our advocacy for reading. To somehow achieve a balance between being a public good driven by a private motive. And so we charted our reason for being as: 

Mission: To enhance the Filipino child's quality of life, intellectual capacity, and cultural consciousness by creating learning opportunities and enjoyable reading experiences

Vision: Partner of the Filipino family in raising a child with a strong sense of self and of country.

It was a decade of growth. Ani was the public face of Adarna while I worked behind the scenes, managing the operations. In that decade, we learned how to appreciate and navigate the ecosystem of children’s book publishing in the Philippines. And since we were the secretariat of the Philippine Board on Books for Young People, we knew that every move was not just for Adarna but for the entire industry. 

Early on, we launched a web site, designed by Eric Roca and run  by the Filipinas Heritage Library since we had no in-house IT skills. Mid-decade we started to sell books online. Before the decade ended, we had created our first blog site and set up a Facebook account. Our digital footprint, that’s how we used to refer to it.

Throughout the decade we initiated and orchestrated activities and events to help create the Adarna brand. We launched Biyaheng Eskuwela, visiting schools and holding free storytelling sessions. We started Teens Read, Too!, a community project involving school-based reading campaigns, a literary camp for teens, and the Pilar Perez Medallion for an outstanding librarian. We held the First Barlaya Writing for Children Workshop in 2002. In partnership with the NCR division of the Department of Education and McDonald’s, we launched the Bright Minds Read Program which exists up to the present as the Read to Learn Program. One of its first findings:  storytelling in schools reduces absenteeism. For the Department of Tourism in Aurora, we held workshops in exchange for a large purchase of big books. 

We ran beginning reading workshops for parents, teachers, and caregivers to promote the value of literature in developing reading skills. We mounted a book fair at UP Los Banos and invited Anvil, Vibal, OMF, Bookmark and Ibon Foundation to join  us. We held an IPR Forum for authors and illustrators. We set up a children’s library at the Philippine Children’s Medical Center. We formed partnerships with the private sector: a three year workshop and purchase contract with Insular Life; storytelling sessions with Philippine Daily Inquirer Read Along as well as with Super Ferry and DZMM; a Libro Mo, Libro Ko donation program with SPI Technologies Foundation. We ventured on our first Science Lecture series, our first Librarian’s Lecture series and our first Faith Workshop. We wooed the NGO sector through our Klasrum Adarna. Somehow, we never ran out of steam.

With the same level of determination and energy to discover all the different ways we could bring books to every school and every home, we explored various book products and storylines. We proudly labelled our books “Kid-Tested.” The first schools where we tested the stories and the illustrations of our books were Alabang Elementary School, Claret School, College of St. Catherine, Isabelo de los Reyes Elementary School, Maitim Elementary School, and U.P. Integrated School. We experimented with big books, graphic novels, board books, activity books, teen romances, reference books. We tested the series approach through a series in science and math. We ventured in  the water for content at the edge: child abuse and dysfunctional families. We were heartless when it came to discarding all product experiments that were not accepted by the market. We could not afford not to do this.  

I guess that decade did prove we were a going concern. If hashtags existed in 2020 when we moved into our building in 2010, I would have used the hashtag #Thebuildingthatbooksbuilt.

The story of Adarna House continues in upcoming essays. Like and follow us on Facebook and Instagram to catch the next release.