Evelyn Gabute

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to Evelyn Gabute by Center for Community Transformation Credit Cooperative (CCT) in Philippines. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the 3 months of this loan, Center for Community Transformation Credit Cooperative (CCT) will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

Dear Lenders,

Evelyn is thankful for the loan granted to her. She invested all of it to purchase materials for the production of violin.

Angel and Evelyn Gabute used their entire loan to purchase maple wood from Germany to design and construct stringed instruments.

Angel builds and repairs violins, violas, cellos, drumsticks and guitars, while Evelyn handles the sales and operations. In addition, the duo perform demos at universities around the Philippines, as most of their customers come from music departments at neighboring schools.

With a larger loan, Angel and his wife plan to move their workshop to a bigger space, hire two employees, and market their instruments in neighboring countries (Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore, and eventually the US). A master violin may take up to 2 months to complete and costs about 15,000 pesos ($317 USD) to make. The violins can then be sold for 30,000 to 50,000 pesos ($635 to $1,058 USD) locally, but the real money comes when selling the violins in other countries where he expects to make $2,000 and as high as $5,000. Angel’s work has already been proven in other countries and one of his instruments is used in concerts by the Kabayao quintet, a family of Filipino musicians.

Angel says his main competitors for fine instruments come from Germany and Italy. He also mentioned that low-cost Chinese manufacturers sell violins for as little as 3,500 pesos ($74 USD). Fortunately for the Gabute’s, these instruments are often not playable (sound terrible) and warp in the humidity of the Philippines. A large portion of their business, in fact, involves modifying and repairing Chinese instruments so that they can be played as intended.

Although Angel’s skill is his craftsmanship, he is also a talented, self-taught musician. He recently won first place in a national guitar competition and was told by the head of Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) that while his instrumental major might be in crafting, his minor is in playing. Today, Angel is responsible for repairing all instruments at the CCP, and he was recently featured on national television for the second time.

Angel is also an amateur inventor. The machine he is using below was made and designed by the couple and put together from various parts they were able to purchase locally. He also made a much more convenient clip for violins.

To Read more about Evelyn and Angel and see some videos of them in their shop follow the link to the Fellows Blog:

http://fellowsblog.kiva.org/2009/10/27/a-violin-lesson-in-geppetto’s-workshop/

If you would like to support CCT borrowers, join our new lending team:

http://www.kiva.org/community/viewTeam?team_id=9184