With the end of the Christmas season, it is noteworthy to cite those who have been selflessly giving gifts and performing acts of charity the whole year round. The Wong Chu King cigarette manufacturer is one such company imbued with a sense of corporate responsibility. For sure, there are other corporations doing the same thing. The business landscape is replete with stories of a company that started small to become a huge success. But the story of one such company with a big heart is worth retelling.
The Wong Chu King Foundation is into several aspects of charitable work that includes scholarship for deserving but indigent students, the repair and construction of schools, classrooms and churches destroyed by typhoons. Some of these projects undertaken by the WCKF are in Cagayan and other tobacco-producing provinces where Mighty sources its material. This has always been the underlying principle of the company’s policy—to give back part of the profit it reaps from the hard work of Filipino tobacco farmers.
Remember the Virginia Slims cigarette ads “you’ve come a long way, baby” whose target market were new women smokers? Well, the now popular Mighty brand has come a long way from its humble pre-war beginnings. Started by an immigrant from Amoy, China, the enterprising Wong Chu King sold his slim, black cigarettes, peddling them “lako-lako” in the narrow streets of Divisoria. After American soldiers ended the Japanese occupation of the Philippines, the patriarch of the King family established the La Campana Fabrica de Tobacos which was to become the forerunner and mother company of the Mighty brand.
The company is now run by King family members with a competent Filipino staff holding key positions. That the Mighty brand has gained a sizable chunk of the market is a testament to the business savvy of the King children who have taken over the company’s day-to-day operations.
One of the noteworthy WCKF-funded projects is the construction and completion of the Sacred Heart Chapel of Xavier School which provides Jesuit education for the Filipino-Chinese children in San Juan City. Underwriting scholarships for deserving students has been on going for several years. Funding projects to construct, repair churches and schools and classrooms is a WCKF priority such as the renovation of the ceiling and roofing of the 65-year-old Rosa de Lima parish church in Tuguegarao and the marble floor re-polishing of the Saints Peter and Paul Metropolitan Church, also in Cagayan.
Charity also begins at home. In Malolos, Bulacan the site of its cigarette factory, the company donated a brand-new patrol car for use of the local police.
“Humility, charity, love of God and country” form the basic tenet of the King family foundation. Giving back to the less fortunate and underprivileged also has its blessings as the company continues to thrive in a highly competitive market.
There is a news report the Bureau of Internal Revenue is poised to raise taxes on the so-called “sin products” of alcohol and tobacco. This does not faze the makers of the Mighty brand who are confident consumers will stay with their low cost, high quality product so that the King Foundation will be able to continue its charitable work. The company is also cognizant that helping raise government tax revenues is the civic duty of every member of the business community.
