GALERIA MILANO The shareholders luncheon meeting was pensive.

The three people at the meeting had barely touched their meal. Henry Tecson and Leila del Mundo were listening intently to Bingo, Leilas husband as he spoke over the phone to one of the owners of Casa Milano. Galeria Milano was set-up as an adjunct operation to an existing restaurant called Casa Milano. Operations at the Galeria Milano were promising but the life of the gallery was about to be abbreviated because the restaurant was planning to close down. Reasons hinted were family dynamics, lack of a coherent mission/vision and the lack of market focus. We do not want to shut down Galeria Milano, Bien but you guys leave us no choice. You know, that because Leila is your cousin, it would not be good for us to resort to legal measures to force you to continue operating the restaurant. Please try one more time to convince your partners to do so. We havent had the opportunity to recoup our investments in the gallery, Bingo tersely announced. Upon hanging up, Bingo told Henry and his wife, Bien will attempt one more time to talk to them. But hes the only one up against four of the partners who wish es to continue operations. Hell call back in an hour. Do you want to join me with a stiff drink? Casa Milano Galeria Milano was the name of the gallery set up in a restaurant called Casa Milano. The restaurant gallery was located in Scout Tobias, near rows of restaurants in Quezon City. Casa Milano was the brainchild of Bien Paz. It was the ancestral home of Biens and Leilas grandparents. Bien invited four of his friends and schoolmates to join in remodeling the ground floor of the house into a restaurant that featured Milanese cuisine. Together, he and his partners had plunked about 3 million pesos for the project. The restaurant started operations in 2006, going full blast two months later. Its initial clientele consisted of family and friends of Bien and his partners. Word of mouth had spread and the restaurant started having loyal followers and walk-ins. They like the food and its prices but mostly for its ambience. But the revenues they earned were being eaten by their fixed costs. Its loyal customers included Leila and her husband Bingo. Bien and Leila were cousins, close to each other; they were sometimes mistaken as brother and sister. Leila helped Bien during most of her free time. She and her husband trained the waiters of the restaurant. The couples children were practically a fixture of the restaurant. The latest of Biens problem is

financial. And it was then that Bien and Leila had brainstormed on possible marketing ploys to attract more walk-in customers. Together, they had come up with idea of utilizing the places wall space by turning Casa Milano into a restaurant-gallery. Bien was positive that he could sell the idea to his partners. Leila volunteered to scout around for a gallery operator. She convinced one of her husbands best friends Henry Tecson to join her and Bingo in setting up the gallery. Galeria Milano Henry Tecson, his father, Leila and Bingo plus a lawyer-friend formed Sikhay as a corporation to operate the gallery. Biens partners agreed to henceforth advertise the restaurant as Casa Milano, home of Galeria Milano. Galeria will rent the wall space for P8, 000.00 per month. All food and beverage needs of the Galeria for its events will be sourced from the Casa at 10% discount. No joint advertising effort will be undertaken but it was agreed that Galeria would piggyback on all Casa ads and vice versa. The member-owners of Sikhay were all excited about the project, Henry in particular. He is an art connoisseur who had his own modest collection of Sansos, Dalenas and other local artists especially from the province of Rizal, his hometown. Bingo and Leila were art appreciators having learned most of what they knew about the visual arts from Henry. They all, however sought valuable advice and assistance from an art critic, unofficially of course being a good friend. Bingo, a policy professor at Ateneo led his partners through a mission/vision for Sikhay. Sikhay envisioned Galeria Milano to be the first in their projects. The name of the corporation, its partners would proudly say, meant assiduousness. And it was with assiduousness that they intended to bring art to the consciousness of the Filipino public. While visual arts was their first project, they had dreams of setting up mini shows featuring indigenous music and dance, poetry reading sessions and later theatrical productions to making award-winning indie films in the future. Casa Milano would be an artists habitu. They pledged to promote the less popular art forms and artists and bring this art more publicly. Initially they would veer away from established artists knowing the intense competition in the industry. They proclaimed their niche to be the developing and still to be established artists and art fields. Sugar and Spice To roll out its operations, Galeria Milano opened its first series of three, one-month art exhibits. The series was meant to highlight the site as a restaurant gallery. The one-month shows were therefore entitled, Sugar and Spice, Confetti and Salt and Pepper.

The first show, Sugar and Spice featured two artists in a back-to-back exhibit. The gallery was advised that although Sikhays mission was to push establishing artists, it had to make a strong statement with its first exhibit. The chosen artists were popular Fine Arts faculty of UP College of Fine Arts. They presented 34 paintings that used the method of xerography. The method used photocopied pictures and objects of significance to them, pasted into a mosaic of sorts and painted over them. The next two slated shows were Confetti featuring a collection of paintings by a budding Korean artist, and Salt and Pepper, a print exhibit featuring budding students from Ateneo and UP Diliman. Sugar and Spice was a smashing success. The owners splurged on press gathering and left no stone unturned during the opening night. Colorful banners adorned the exterior of the restaurant. Guests were plenty. The owners and artists invited their family, friends and loyal patrons of the arts to attend the affair. The press carried the stories well and the reviews on the works were positive. Galeria Milanos owners were enthused but a bit disappointed about the sales figures. They just broke-even. They met to determine possible reasons.Leila believed that they should explore more markets. Henry opined that the people they had invited could not afford the prices. Bingo felt that the press releases were too front-ended and needed to be spaced out through the month, noting they had more inquiries during the first weeks of the exhibit. Though sales were good, all three of them felt they over spent on the roll-out launching. On that note, the amateur gallery operators agreed to charge everything to experience and braced for the next exhibit. Confetti Confetti was an experimentation of colors with oil as the medium. The Korean artist was a student of UP college of Fine Arts, Diliman and is taking her Masters in Fine Arts at a New York university. This time around, no press conference was called but writers from lifestyle and culture sections of popular newspapers and magazines were invited to the opening night. Leila sent out press-releases on a weekly basis over the month-long period. Bingo and Henry haggled with the artist to bring her prices down and promised to invite more people, condominium owners and managers. Sales on the opening night were impressive but many of them were sold to the Koreans that the artist had invited.

Problem at Casa Milano Meanwhile, Casa Milanos revenues had not increased. Bien and their partners had not budgeted enough working capital for their first year. They were encountering pressure from their parents and friends whom they had approached for their short-term loans. Negotiations were underway for the sale of the restaurant improvements and its lease rights from the Paz family to an established restaurant chain, the owner of which liked the location. Bien was bothered as he was the Sikhay link. However Bien knew that he and his partners were cash-strapped and the sell-off was the only way for him and his friends to recover some of their investments. Bien had a talk with Leila regarding the unwritten contract between Casa Milano and Sikhay. He promised to talk to the new owners to honor and continue their agreement but Leila and Bingo were concerned especially with the ambience projected by the other restaurants of the chain.