At 17, Alejandro Martín began working in a chain store selling televisions and sound equipment to pay for college. He entered the career of Social Communication and Journalism, at the Minuto de Dios University, but soon after he realized that he wanted to dedicate himself to sales.
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Although he regretted not studying business administration, he continued with his career, and, in parallel, his talent led him to rapidly rise in the workplace. A year later, at just 18 years old, he managed to be the supervisor of one of the warehouses and at 19 he was the national supervisor of the entire sales team.
When he graduated, at 21 years old, he was a product specialist at Sony, managing the marketing of a computer brand for Colombia.
The following year he joined Samsung as a product manager for the laptop and printer division. He was there for about three years and then he joined the D-Link company, where he was in charge of the product managers of the technology sector, and of the marketing strategy.
While in that company, at the age of 25, he realized that his level of English was an impediment to continue advancing. “The Chinese, Japanese or Koreans visited us and I hardly said How are you (How are you? In Spanish). So I thought I had to leave the country to study and come back ”, he says.
And that’s how the Bogota native, who grew up in Medellín, quit his job and in 2013 he put together his savings, took on a large debt and went to New York, United States.
The first days of what was to be the American dream were traumatic. When I got to the place where I was going to stay, the person began to explain to me where I had to sleep, what to eat, etc., and I didn’t understand anything. When he finished speaking, he asked me: do you understand me? And I told him: I don’t speak English (I don’t speak English, in Spanish) ”, he says.
The next day he started his classes. “I told the secretary that I did not speak English and she took me like a small child, took me to the classroom, told the teacher that I was the new student and closed the door.” The teacher asked me: What’s your name? (What’s your name, in Spanish) And I told him I’m from Colombia (I’m from Colombia, in Spanish).
Despite his little English, this cheerful young man a month later was already telling jokes to his colleagues.
The days passed and he realized that he had to work because the cost of living increased. “One day I was on a train and I heard a Mexican speaking Spanish on his cell phone. When he hung up, I asked him where there was a Latin place to talk to people in Spanish, and he gave me directions to get to Colombia Street, ”he recalls.
Alejandro came to that street, located at the corner of 37th Avenue and 82nd Street in Queens County, and found work as a waiter.
At the age of 27, upon reaching a good level of English, he decided to return to the country with the aim of advancing in his professional career. “I presented myself to Samsung as product manager for Latin America. I did the interview and got to the end of the process, I even spoke with the Korean, president of the company. But they told me that I was too young for such a high position, that they needed an older person, and that they could put me in a lower position while I continued to gain work experience.
This news was not what Alexander expected. He felt bored and disappointed, so he repacked suitcases to return to the United States, with the aim of saving for investments in Colombia. At that moment he received the news that his girlfriend was pregnant.
Alejandro returned to the United States while his partner was completing the process for the American visa and within eight days she arrived in New York.
Craving
The couple came to the United States to start from scratch, but that was not an impediment to success. “If I could do so many things in Colombia, here it will not be too big for me,” Alejandro thought at the time.
One day his girlfriend got a craving for a tamale, so they searched for hours but couldn’t find it. “But my mother, who is from Tolima, makes some spectacular tamales and she told us to make them,” she recalls.
Their mother told them what the ingredients were, gave them all the instructions and, without knowing how to cook, they made them. Although he says that “they are the worst tamales they have made in all of history,” this is how he unintentionally started the business that would change the course of his life.
That day they had some tamales left over, so Alejandro sold them to his Colombian co-workers. “They loved it and started asking me for more. So I started telling my bosses and clients that I sold tamales and I could take them home. “
A few days later, a colleague lost his job and told him, jokingly, that “he was going to have to start selling those tamales.” But the joke turned into fact and his friend started selling 10-15 tamales a day. Seeing this, Alejandro thought that he too could go out to sell tamales.
‘I spent three years selling on the street’
“With all the pain in the world I went out to sell tamales in the street, but the good thing was that nobody knew me,” says the young man.
The penalty happened to the month. After that, he offered tamales to all the people who passed by the exit of the train from 82nd Street with Roosevelt, who is on Colombia Street, and, to whom he could not convince, he gave them as gifts.
After his girlfriend prepared them, Alejandro would arrive every day at 2:00 pm with his tamales, which he kept in a thermal bag, and there he would remain until 8:00 pm, next to a sign that had written with a marker ‘ Colombian tamales’.
Regardless of the very low or high temperatures, his perseverance led customers to go looking for him on that street when they were craving a tamale, which had a Latin flavor, since the ingredients are carried by a distributor that ships products from Colombia and the leaves They are carried through cots by sea.
“When it was cold I covered myself up like an Eskimo and some people told me to go home. But others even passed by, and out of pity, they said to me: How many do you have left and I bought them? When I ran out I called my girlfriend and told her to take more because people were buying, I had to take advantage of it, ”he says with a laugh.
Although he rested for a few days, for three years Alexander saw that his income gradually increased.
‘In a pandemic, everyone wanted to sell tamales’
Last year restaurants began looking for Alejandro to sell them their tamales. Seeing this, the man from Bogotá started looking for distributors and looked for a place that was at home, for his company ‘La Tamalería’.
“I was scared when I came off the street. I was used to selling 200 or 300 tamales in one day, but I went home and started selling it to the distributors cheaper, if to a normal customer I sold it for 10 dollars to a distributor it would be sold for 5 dollars, ”he explains.
Although he says the first month was bad, “the word spread and that gave the business more status.” “We started to create our social networks, to publish in the internal groups in New York. Then we set up a production factory point and today we have a network of more than 140 distributors, and we sell online ”, he assures.
When the coronavirus pandemic began, their business began to grow rapidly, as many people were unemployed and saw that they could sell tamales to earn an income.
“People would buy 50 or 100 tamales from me and publish them online to sell them, and that’s when the business grew the most. They took 40 percent of the profit on the product, so a person in a day could earn 400 dollars ”.
After that, they launched new products such as tamales and lechona, prepared by two residents of Tolima, and thus increased their success. “‘La Tamalería’ previously had a turnover of $ 20,000 or $ 30,000 a month and today it bills more than $ 100,000, manufacturing between 6,000 and 8,000 units of tamales per week,” he says.
Five months ago they opened the first production franchise in Miami and they already have more sales there than in the Big Apple.
It is currently in negotiations to open another 14 franchises, as its goal is to have one in each US state where there are Latinos. “I want tamalería to become the McDonald’s of Colombians,” he says.
His mother, although she has not been able to visit her son, has tried the tamales, she tells Alejandro that they are rich, but they are not the same as hers. There is no doubt that with his touch all Americans would end up falling in love with a good Colombian tamale.
LUISA MERCADO
POLITICAL WRITING / WEATHER
Instagram: @ luisamercado1
Twitter: @LuisaMercadoD
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