homegrown and proud: business mirror news feature
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BUSINESS and outsourcing consultant Gregory Kittelson and lawyer Amanda Carpo founded Kittelson & Carpo Consulting, aiming to provide assistance to companies looking to start and do business in the Philippines. The duo assisted their clients with business registration, taxation, payroll, executive search, recruitment and even visas. Their clients initially approached them to help them get registered, but soon their clients started to turn to them for officespace solutions. Initially, they referred their clients to a large realestate firm and a serviced office company, but soon realized that there was an opportunity to expand their services to address these realestate needs. Their desire to be responsive led them to partner with one of their first clients, Michael McCullough, and to hire their first inhouse broker, Rosario Carbonell. This team of four would then give birth to what is now KMC Mag Group. For Kittelson, McCullough and Carpo, one of the biggest challeriges that they faced at the start was building their brand. KMC Mag Group was up against multinational firms, and the team realized that it needed to build a good repiutation quickly in order to carve out a significant piece of the market for themselves. "One of the most challenging parts about starting KMC Mag Group was the initial branding-a new company takes time to build credibility in a new market," Kittelson shared. "What was really crucial was to build trust and provide great customer service to our clients. That has led to those first clients returning and referring us to other businesses. "For me, the biggest challenge starting out was having no capital and having to compete with international realestate services companies with global offices. It was a DavidversusGoliath story," Carpo added. "Our advantage was that KMC was homegrown. We knew the market, and we knew our clients. We were able to build that knowledge and master the market quickly." "Finding the right staff was definitely a challenge, as well as having to learn the entire realestate market in a very compressed time," McCullough said. "I refer to that expression, 'Rome was not built in a day,' because it really takes time and constant work. It was a lot of late nights; trying to get our data correct; trying to get our reports correct; and getting our presentations polished." Through hard work, grit and determination, KMC Mag Group has become the largest local realestate services firm in the Philippines, with over 100 employees. The firm offers various services, such as tenant representation, landlord representation, offshoring corporate services, residential services, property management, project marketing, hotels and leisure, facilities management, research and consultancy, and investments, and has worked with companies such as ANZ, Roche, Canon, Fox, World Wildlife Fund, QBE Shared Services... (read more: http://kmcmaggroup.com/resources/media/press-release/homegrown-and-proud)TRANSCRIPT
