It was midnight when Socorro “Nanay” Cancio-Ramos got the call in bed. A fire had broken out in some part in Quezon Boulevard and, if unchecked, just might rampage through several more including a branch of National Book Store (NBS). Her first call was to her three children to inform them of the crisis. Then, against their protestations and concern for her welfare, the still-feisty founder and grand lady of the Philippines’ largest book store chain grabbed a cab (“My driver was off-duty and probably sleeping,” she points out wryly) and headed for the hot spot.

Fortunately, the fire was already in control by the time Nanay arrived, leaving the NBS Quezon Cit y branch untouched. The incident had happened many years ago, and the lady agrees that she has become more careful over the passage of time. However, it does show the single-minded devotion, tenacity and courage of a matriarch responsible for entrenching the book chain as the largest, most numerous with 120 branches all over the Philippines, and most enduring in the country, outlasting many of its competitors which now remain a jot of one’s childhood memory.

Family Affair

In more than 60 years, since its start as a humble stall in Escolta before the Second World War, NBS has expanded to include other successful ventures such as publishing house Anvil Books, the more high-end Power Books chain, music stores Music One and Tower Records, and the NBS Book Express, a convenience store for books, office and school supplies that caters directly to the community and local neighborhoods. Nanay Ramos’ three children— Al f redo, Benjamin, and Cecilia—and their children (her grandkids) help her manage the mammoth enterprise.

“Sila na [her family] ang nag-aasikaso,” the 85-year-old lady chuckles, “Ako, naghahanap na lang ako ng ‘mali.’ Pumipirma pa rin ako ng maraming tseke.” Then there are the meetings with foreign partners who still want to get first-hand her opinion on which of their books can succeed in the Philippine market—and thus should be displayed in her bookstore chain.

Still, the matriarch keeps to a workday schedule that has witnessed Martial Law rules on importation, several political revolutions, global economic crunches, and the new challenges posed by technology in the form of electronic reading pads that can download electronic books at a price. She still gets up most days at 6 a.m. and retires after midnight, or if the occasion merits, sometimes as late as 3 in the morning the next day.

The only rest she allows herself are the usual holidays or the birthday celebrations of her children and grandchildren. Grandson Miguel Ramos, who is involved in the bookstore chain’s marketing and handles NBS Express, admits that their encouragement for their dear grandmother to take a vacation every now and then falls on deaf ears. The one exception was a trip to Monaco, a prize which Nanay won as Ernst and Young’s Philippine Entrepreneur of the Year in 2005; not surprisingly, and to her delight, 21 of her immediate family members joined her.

Nanay Up Close

The old of ten-quoted adage that success comes with passion, perseverance and hard work does not become a cliché when applied to the founder’s life. During the initial days of NBS Escolta prior to the war, 22-hour working hour days were not uncommon. What sets her apart though from other tycoons who have paid their dues with blood, sweat and tears is the sense of “joyousness” (as National Artist Nick Joaquin puts it in his 1977 mini-biography of the lady) and the aforementioned sense of wonder she still exudes after all these years.

Even today, just in casual conversation, this influential lady speaks to you as if she were an elderly friend you had known for years, one you could trust, learn from and yet be listened to. The warmth in her eyes and the glow in her demeanor suggest that there are still opportunities to be made in the world, if you’d only take the time to find them.

Two things the lady is obviously passionate about: books and selling. As a high school student, the young Coring wrapped bubble gum packages and sold Sweepstakes tickets to buy her own books, paper and pencils; whatever was left helped bring food to the table for herself, her parents and five other siblings. As she told Joaquin, “I think I’m happiest when I’m selling…I will die a tindera.”

It was that combination of sense of urgency to provide, tenacity, and a disarming charm that persuaded the hinetes in Avenida back then to buy more than one just Sweepstakes ticket (and badger their friends to do the same), or won over the confidence of a Japanese officer into making the sales newbie his supplier for 3000 reams of paper.

Her passion for books was probably fueled many decades ago by her sheer desire to learn. Her personal favorites remain the classics that shaped her attitude and served as her inspiration: “Norman Vincent Peale’s ‘Power of Positive Thinking’ is one. But it was Dale Carnegie’s ‘How To Win Friends and Influence People’ that helped me in my dealing with customers; it was the one book that I read from the first page to the last.”

She stresses, “Natuto ako dahil nagbasa ako.” Maybe that’s why she remains unfazed by the so-called digital challenge: “There’s nothing like a book that you can hold or read before you go to sleep. You can bring it to the bathroom anytime. And after you’ve read it entirely, you can put it in your library and give it to your children. We encourage people to read because that’s how they learn even more.”

Though her poor upbringing did not allow for a formal college education, Nanay would eventually be awarded a Doctor of Humanities in a Special Academic Convocation in 2006 by the Ateneo de Manila University.

The evolution of a business

Back then in the 1950s, as a mother who valued education for her offspring, Nanay made time out of her extremely busy schedule to help her then elementary-grader children do their homework. When the kids reached high school, she taught them the first reins of business by letting them do cashier work.“Kapag nagkakaha sila, nakikita nila ang binibili ng tao. How to display the books. Where you will put the pencils and the notebooks. It looks easy [until] you open a branch.”

The same principle can be applied to developing a nose for knowing what kind of books will be a hit in the Philippines and which will go unnoticed. While The New York Times bestseller list is a valuable guide, it cannot totally account for Filipino preferences. While the international bestsellers the Harry Potter Series and Rick Warren’s “A Purpose-Driven Life” caught the imagination of the Filipino reading public (73,000 hard-bound books were sold in the former’s case and 330,000 copies in the latter’s), not one copy of the initial 3,000 of Erma Bombeck’s “Life is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits” was sold; NBS eventually sold each copy at a fraction. “Some titles click,” Nanay shrugs, and as for those who don’t,

“Life is a gamble, too.” NBS itself had about a few “restarts” before building up into the juggernaut it is today. Nanay waxes philosophical about “life’s ups and downs,” the latter including the million-peso devastation of NBS Dagupan caused by Ondoy. “You have to know how to tackle it. You have to know how to adjust. When my husband [Jose to whom she had been married for more than 50 years] died in 1992, I thought that was the end. Nakaraos din.”

The presence of a priest who blesses every NBS opening signifies that providence is not ruled out either. The NBS’ QC incident was not the first time that one of Nanay’s properties had been spared from a blazing inferno. The other occasion happened during the end of the WWII, when the fleeing Japanese forces torched Manila to the ground. The capital was in chaos, and people were running for their lives amidst the flames and hail of bullets. The very few who remained unscathed had to fend off looters who were raiding every dwelling for remnants of food and other supplies.

Though NBS Escolta was also a casualty, Nanay’s home as well as her mother’s in Misericordia somehow survived unscathed. Stored in those two houses were dozens of cartons of whiskey, school supplies, greeting cards, and American books and publications hidden away from Japanese government censorship that would have literally ripped away half their pages.

“Hindi naabot ang bahay ng sunog,” the lady reminisces, the wonder in her voice at the memory undiminished by time. “Ni hindi naloot. It was God’s will.”

The whiskey and the books combined brought in the dollars that allowed the Ramoses, Nanay and husband Jose to start NBS all over again in the late 1940s, this time in a small space in an intersection of Avenida and Soler Streets. The relaunch was far from grandiose: the shop’s sliding door in the evening would become by day their table displaying wares.

But present were the Ramoses’ “determination to make it right,” Nanay says. “Kung may passion ka, pagtitiyagaan mo. Ano ang alam ko? Hindi ako nag-aral. Ang alam ko lang magtinda ng notebook at lapis. [All we had] were patience, perseverance and love of our work.”

And ultimately, it was more than enough to build a powerhouse enterprise and create a long-lasting legacy.