Long before Delimondo became known for its premium corned beef products, Katrina Ponce Enrile was already experimenting with business as a child. For her, entrepreneurship did not begin in boardrooms or formal business training. It started with saving allowance money, selling ice candy during summer, and learning early lessons about hard work from her father.
“As a child, I was always very much into my dad being an Ilocano,” Enrile recalls. “He always taught me the value of hard work and of money.”
Those lessons shaped how she viewed spending and saving at an early age.
“So he said, save your money and use it properly,” she says.
Unlike many children who quickly spent their school allowance, Enrile developed the habit of holding on to her money and finding ways to earn more.
“I would always save my baon,” she recalls. “He’d give me baon, but I wouldn’t spend it on.”
That mindset gradually evolved into small entrepreneurial projects.
“And every summer I would start selling ice candy,” Enrile says. “Doing things, you know, to just earn me more money.”
Many entrepreneurs often show early signs of commercial instinct long before launching formal businesses. Childhood ventures such as selling snacks, trading small products, or finding ways to earn independently often help develop confidence in selling, risk-taking, and money management.
For Enrile, those experiences created an early familiarity with entrepreneurship that continued into her university years.
Building Businesses While Still Young
While studying at the University of the Philippines, Enrile began launching businesses on a much larger scale.
“Fast forward into college, into university, I opened Pandesal Magic,” she says.
What started as a student venture quickly expanded into multiple locations.
“I had five branches, one in Juana, one in Katipunan, one in Claro M. Recto where the university belt was, and another in SM Makati in the food court,” Enrile recalls.
At the time, she was still very young.
“I was in my late teens, early 20s.”
The story illustrates another entrepreneurial pattern often seen among founders: many start by experimenting across different industries before eventually building the business they become known for later.
Enrile did not stop with food retail. She also entered the clothing business through a fashion venture called Options.
“Then I also started Options, a clothing line,” she says.
Initially, the business focused on custom-made pieces.
“At first, it was made-to-order pieces,” Enrile explains.
Eventually, the business expanded into ready-to-wear apparel.
“And later on, I branched into ready-to-wear.”
The company eventually secured retail presence inside Shoe Mart.
“I even had a stall in Shoe Mart,” she recalls.
These early experiences exposed Enrile to different aspects of entrepreneurship, including retail operations, inventory management, customer demand, and expansion.
Rather than focusing on a single business immediately, she experimented across multiple categories while still relatively young.
Learning Through Experience
One of Enrile’s lesser-known ventures also involved garment exports.
“I also managed to export,” she says.
At the time, exporting garments involved significant logistical and regulatory challenges, particularly for smaller operators.
“I was left with over 2,000 machines and a whole bodega full of materials,” Enrile recalls.
Despite lacking certain export quotas that were often required during that period, she still managed to operate the business.
“Even though I didn’t have a quota—because at that time you needed one to export to the United States or anywhere else—I was still able to manage.”
That experience became another important part of her entrepreneurial background.
“That became part of my background,” she says.
The story highlights an important reality about entrepreneurship: many successful founders develop business instincts not through formal theory, but through repeated exposure to real operational challenges.
By her early twenties, Enrile had already experienced food retail, fashion, mall operations, and exporting—long before building the brand she would later become known for.
Developing an Entrepreneurial Mindset Early
Looking back, Enrile’s early ventures reveal how entrepreneurship often develops gradually through experimentation rather than through a single breakthrough idea.
Her experiences selling ice candy, operating bakery branches, managing a clothing line, and handling exports gave her firsthand exposure to risk, operations, sales, and expansion at a relatively young age.
Just as importantly, the mindset behind those ventures was shaped early by lessons about discipline, saving, and hard work.
For Enrile, entrepreneurship was never simply about launching one company. It became a way of thinking that started long before Delimondo existed.
