July is here.
And somewhere at Island City Mall in Tagbilaran City, Bohol, the Sandugo OTOP Trade Expo is being prepared again — the booths, the product displays, the market matching sessions, the buying delegations, the energy of small Filipino businesses putting their best products in front of people who can change their lives.
I know that energy well. I have stood inside it.
Two years in a row — 2024 and 2025 — I was there as DTI Surigao del Norte's OTOP Technical Staff, representing our province's micro and small enterprises at one of Bohol's biggest trade events. I helped set up the booth. I coordinated with buyers. I carried products — literally, on my shoulder, or on a cart — from the staging area to the purchasing floor, because sometimes the most important thing a technical staff person can do is just make sure the product gets where it needs to go.
This July, the expo will happen again.
I will not be there.
And the reason — the full story — is something I will share in the coming weeks. For now, let me tell you about the last time I was.
Bohol Is Not Just an Assignment For Me
Before the trade expo, before the DTI work, before the official travel orders — Bohol has always been something more personal.
My mom is Boholana. Born and raised in Taug, Lila, Bohol — a small barangay in the south of the island where our family's ancestral house still stands. We go back almost every year — my mom, my wife, and I — usually in May, when the island is warm and the family connections that span decades feel close enough to touch.
I have walked the streets of Taug knowing my mom walked them first, decades before I existed. I have sat in the ancestral house and understood, in a way that is hard to explain to someone who has not experienced it, what it means to return to a place your family carries in their blood.
So when the Sandugo OTOP Trade Expo brought me to Tagbilaran on official government travel — it was never just a work trip for me. It was always Bohol. My mom's Bohol. The province I know through her stories, her cooking, her tablea, her accent that still surfaces in certain words after decades of living in Surigao City.
Carrying MSME products through a trade expo floor in Tagbilaran while staying near the town where my mother grew up — that combination of professional purpose and personal rootedness is something I will carry long after the travel order is filed and forgotten.
The 2025 Sandugo — What We Brought and What Happened
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| Sandugo opening |
Being in Tagbilaran for a week also meant something beyond the official work.
My cousins — the Boholano branch of the family that my mom's roots connect me to — knew I was coming. They were excited. Which meant that after the expo days ended, there was bonding. There was food. And there was the beach — because in Bohol, the beach is never more than a few steps away if you know where to go.
That combination — official government trade expo during the day, cousins and coastline in the evening — is the version of work travel that makes the travel orders worth signing. 😄
In July 2025, I assisted four MSMEs from Surigao del Norte:
Aquariane Food Products Manufacturing — and here I need to explain the name, because the first question most people ask is: what does "aquarian" have to do with food products? The answer is: the owner is an Aquarius. Zodiac-based branding. Surigao entrepreneurship at its most personal. 😄
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| Aquarian Food Products Manufacturing |
Their flagship product is the 28-in-1 Herbal Mixed — a blend of 28 herbal ingredients in one drink. I started drinking it every morning during the expo week because they had free taste at the booth and I was curious. By midweek I noticed my uric acid discomfort — which I have been managing since my lab results flagged it — had eased noticeably. I cannot make medical claims. What I can say is that I bought some to bring home and I meant it.
The free taste drew people in every single day. Legitimately. People loved it — not because of the branding, but because of how it made them feel. That is the best product endorsement that exists.
Lisbos Cacao Trading — this one felt personal before I even tasted anything. My mom has been making homemade tablea from scratch her entire life — roasting cacao beans, grinding them by hand, molding them the Bohol way. (https://www.mavscorner.com/2026/03/homemade-tablea-bohol-tradition-100-percent-cacao.html) Lisbos takes that same cacao tradition and expands it into a full product line.
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| Lisbos Cacao Trading |
Their range includes the original tablea, mixed nut tablea with candied cacao nibs, dark chocolates, their own version of Dubai chocolate — yes, that Dubai chocolate — and a tablea spread that works like a Filipino Nutella made from real cacao. Every variant had free taste. I found reasons to visit their booth multiple times. For research purposes. 😄
Fishermen Cooperative of Consolacion — Bottled Bangus in Corn Oil, Spicy and Classic variants. The cooperative I had assisted with Halal Certification training in Butuan City in December 2025 — the same group who traveled from Surigao del Norte to Bohol with their products packed carefully and their hopes in order.
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| Fishermen Cooperative of Consolacion |
Urbiztondo Crop Producers Cooperative — Cassava Chips, and I need to be transparent here: these are my personal favorite chips from the entire expo. Flavors include BBQ, sour cream, original, and cheese — and the cheese flavor is the correct choice. Not a matter of opinion. Objective fact. The cheese powder coating on a properly made cassava chip is one of the small perfect things in Filipino snack food and Urbiztondo has figured it out.
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| Urbiztondo Crop Producers Cooperative |
I may have visited their booth for free taste more than was strictly professional. 😄
The Day 1 Purchase Order
Four businesses. Different products. The same shared need: to be seen, to be chosen, to have someone in a buying delegation say yes.
On Day 1 — the first day of the actual trade matching — the Alturas Group submitted a Purchase Order for the Fish Cooperative's Bottled Bangus.
I remember that moment. The cooperative's representatives had traveled from Consolacion, Dapa, Surigao del Norte to Tagbilaran, Bohol — hours by land and sea — with their products packed carefully, their booth set up with everything they had, hoping that someone on the other side of a trade table would see what they had built and want it.
The Alturas Group said yes on Day 1.
That kind of moment is why this job existed for me — not the paperwork, not the travel orders, not the official documentation. The moment a small Filipino cooperative gets a purchase order from a major buyer because someone helped them get into the room and show what they could do.
Total sales across all four MSMEs for the entire expo: ₱529,581.00
Half a million pesos. But the number that actually tells the story better than any peso figure is this one:
Zero.
Zero products left at ICM when we packed up.
Every single MSME left the Island City Mall trade floor with empty boxes and empty hands. No leftover inventory. No unsold stock to re-pack and carry back to Surigao del Norte. Every unit of 28-in-1 Herbal Mixed, every bottle of Bangus, every bar of Lisbos tablea and Dubai chocolate variant, every bag of cassava chips — gone. Bought. Taken home by buyers and consumers who tried the free taste, decided they wanted more, and paid for it.
That is not just a good sales number. That is validation. For the fishermen of Consolacion who bottled their bangus. For the cacao producers of Surigao del Norte who made tablea into a luxury product with a Dubai chocolate variant. For the cassava farmers of Urbiztondo whose cheese-flavored chips ran out before the last day.
₱529,581.00 in sales. Zero products remaining. Every MSME with a Purchase Order in hand.
That is what Surigao del Norte brought to Bohol in July 2025.
What I Actually Did — The Unglamorous Version
I want to be honest about what OTOP technical support at a trade expo actually looks like from the inside — because I think people imagine it as more polished than it is.
Yes, I coordinated with buyers. Yes, I represented DTI Surigao del Norte. Yes, I documented sales and facilitated market matching.
I also carried boxes.
Literally. Products from the staging and storage area to the display booth. A cart when there was one available. My shoulders when there was not. The kind of labor that does not appear in any official report but is completely necessary when you have four MSMEs with physical products and a booth to set up before the expo opens.
I fixed display arrangements at 7AM. I troubleshot packaging that got slightly damaged in transit. I answered buyer questions about product specifications, shelf life, and minimum order quantities — questions that require you to actually know the products, not just represent them from a distance.
This is what OTOP Technical Staff means in practice. Not just the title. The work. All of it — including the parts that leave you sweaty and tired before the first buyer delegation arrives.
I would do it again without hesitation.
Which makes it harder to write that I will not be doing it again. Not this July. Not in this role.
The Ancestral House in Taug, Lila
During the expo assignment, I stayed near Taug — the barangay in Lila, Bohol where our family's ancestral house stands. The same barangay my mother left decades ago and carries with her still.
There is something specific about returning to a place your family is from when you are there for professional reasons — the ordinary work of setting up booths and coordinating buyers layered on top of a geography that is personal in a way you cannot fully explain to colleagues.
I walked through familiar streets in the evenings after the expo day ended — after the cousins, after the beach, after the last free taste of the day. I thought about my mom — who was at home in Surigao City, monitored by the Tapo C200 camera my wife checks regularly, making her tablea and drinking her sikwate and probably not noticing how often I thought about her while I was in the province she came from.
Bohol is her place. Every time I go, I go a little bit on her behalf too.
July 2026 — Someone Else Will Be There
The Sandugo OTOP Trade Expo will happen again this July. The booths will be set up at Island City Mall again. The buying delegations will walk those same aisles. The MSMEs from across the country will bring their products and their hope to the same ICM trade floor where the Fish Cooperative of Consolacion got a Day 1 purchase order from Alturas Group in 2025.
I will be somewhere else.
After nine years with DTI Surigao del Norte — nine years of product labels, ACT Sessions, trade fairs, Halal certification trips, Interdesign ocular inspections, OTOP market matching, and yes, carrying products on my shoulder at 7AM before buyers arrive — I am moving on.
The full story is coming. I will share it when the timing is right.
What I can say now is this: leaving does not mean forgetting. The MSMEs I worked with are real businesses with real people behind them. The ₱529,581 in sales from Sandugo 2025 is a real number that represents real families. The work was real. Nine years of it.
I am going to miss the Sandugo expo. I am going to miss the labor of it — the boxes, the cart, the early mornings, the moment a buyer says yes. I am going to miss Bohol in July, which overlaps with the province my mom is from and the ancestral house in Taug and cousins who get excited when they hear I am coming for a week.
But the best thing I can do for the MSMEs of Surigao del Norte — and for myself — is leave this chapter properly. Completely. With everything documented, everything transitioned, and this blog post as my honest account of what two Sandugo expos meant to me.
Thank you to every MSME who trusted DTI Surigao del Norte with their product. Thank you to every buyer who said yes. Thank you to the Fish Cooperative of Consolacion for the Day 1 purchase order that I will remember for a long time. Thank you to Aquariane for the 28-in-1 that genuinely helped my uric acid every morning. Thank you to Lisbos for the Dubai chocolate tablea that made me a repeat free taste visitor. Thank you to Urbiztondo for the cheese cassava chips that I maintain — objectively, factually — are the correct flavor. 😄
Surigao del Norte showed up in Bohol. Every product sold. Every MSME left with a Purchase Order and empty hands.
And Bohol — my cousins, the beach, the ancestral house in Taug, the free taste at every booth — was very, very good to us.
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Note: Sales figures and MSME details in this post are from official DTI Surigao del Norte trade expo documentation. The views expressed are my personal reflections and do not represent official DTI statements. Medical observations about the 28-in-1 Herbal Mixed reflect personal experience only and are not intended as medical advice.
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Hanggang sa muli.
-Mavs
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