The Intrapreneur: Toby Claudio’s Winning Entrepreneurial Spirit that’s Changing Toby’s Sports from Within

Toby Claudio of Toby’s Sports shares his winning game plan for the future of sports retail: revolutionary store concepts, interactive flagship stores, a muscular e-commerce presence, and a firm focus on serving the company’s customers.

When it comes to Philippine sports retail, there is only one name with the market presence, brand recognition, and history of Toby’s Sports. With 68 stores around the country, including game-changing store concepts like RUNNR, Toby’s Sports Arena and urbanAthletics, one could even call Toby’s Sports the G.O.A.T. (Greatest of All Time) of Philippine sports retail. Behind the success of Toby’s Sports in recent years is Toby Claudio, the President of the Quorum Group, which runs all of the company’s brands in the retail and online space. Far from coasting on past victories, Toby Claudio is leading the charge into a brave new world, one dominated by e-commerce and innovation.

The Business Manual spoke with Toby Claudio this April, in a halftime huddle of sorts, at Toby’s Sports Arena in BGC, to mark Toby’s Sports 45th year and discuss what the future holds for the next 45 years and beyond. Stepping foot into the massive interactive space that is Toby’s Sports’ flagship store, those who grew up with the original sporting goods store in Virra Mall cannot help but compare. Clearly, the company has come a long way. Equally clear is the company’s ambition as well as its continuing drive to champion each and every one of its customers.

Toby’s Sports: Kickoff and Early Years

As the son of Toby’s Sports founder and CEO, Roberto “Bobby” Claudio, Sr., Toby Claudio was acutely aware of the privilege and the burden having your name on the sign outside the store came with. But while others would resent, rebel against, or take advantage of being the COO–Child of the Owner–Toby Claudio considered himself to be fortunate.

“It was definitely a unique experience growing up,” Toby says, understating his circumstances. “Not many people have a store named after them. But I can’t complain… They decided early when they used my name that it would be something in my future… I think it’s a huge privilege.”

Growing up surrounded by the family business, Toby goes on to say, “As a five-year-old kid I thought I was the luckiest kid in the world to have a toy store named after me. Then I started playing sports and I really got into it. So as I grew up around the business, I would hang out, spend all my afternoons after school in the store in Greenhills. It really became a part of me, and it was clear from the start that I wanted to help out eventually in the business… It was a no-brainer for me.”

Toby was five years old when his father, Bobby Claudio acquired a small stall in a brand new mall in Greenhills, Virra Mall. When plans to have this stall rented out as passive income fell through, Bobby decided to go into business. The first product he sold? Children’s toys.

Bobby Claudio named the store Toby’s Forms and Shapes, and it would take him a year to pivot towards selling sporting goods. When he did, the store was reborn as Toby’s Sports and Hobbies.

“It only took him a year to realize that his real passion was sports,” Toby says of his father’s pivot. “He’s an avid tennis player… He reformatted the store from toys to sports. And he introduced skateboarding.” With its new direction, the store became a success.

Founded in 1978, Toby’s Sports origins were grounded in a very different time. In 2020s entrepreneurial language, Toby explains, “The pain point he wanted to resolve was [that] really back then in the early 80s, there were no proper sports stores. Sporting goods [were] still sold beside musical instruments in Raon, Quiapo. And there was no pro-shop style sports store that existed back then.”

This also meant that there were no competitors to emulate, no expertise to borrow, and no business plan to copy. To create his pro shop, Bobby Claudio had to do it all by himself. 

He did this by learning from stores in the United States through firsthand experience. As circumstances would have it, the family had moved to the US for a few years to accompany Toby’s mother Cora Claudio as she took her Master’s and PhD in Stanford. “My dad applied for a job in a sporting goods store to learn the business,” Toby relates. “He learned how to string rackets. And he brought all of that back home, and that helped him set up the first Toby’s Sports concept with professional racket stringing, the top brands, and in a setting that’s really a proper sporting goods store.”

Passion in the Game Plan

Though the sporting goods concept became a rapid success, every business is faced with challenges, and Toby’s Sports is no exception.

“I saw how hard my dad and my two uncles, Jojo and Rod, worked to grow the business in its early years,” Toby says about the growth of Toby’s Sports. “We started with one store in Greenhills and it was like adding one store a year slowly but surely. The third store almost burned down in Cubao when COD went up in flames. There was the EDSA revolution when we opened our North EDSA store, right on the same week…”

The hits came hard and fast over the years and decades that followed. Toby continues, “The business had huge ups and downs: the coups in the 80s, economic crises, the Asian economic crisis. There are many things the business had to hurdle to make it this far. 45 years, 68 stores. But I think they were able to weather all of that because clearly [my father and uncles] took a leap of faith. They took a risk. They started something new that the country and the Filipino sporting public needed. And we’ve just really built on that mission. Better products, better stores, and then eventually expanded into different concepts also.”

Toby’s Sports endured and flourished while countless other businesses found themselves KO-ed by the combination of economic challenges over the decades. And yet, Toby Claudio credits one thing as the critical reason for their success: passion.

“Let me put it this way,” he says. “If we had continued as a toy store we would probably not be here anymore because that’s not where our passion was. My dad and my uncles and me, myself, we really love sports. Our mission is very clear, which is to help every Filipino become champions through sports and an active lifestyle. And that’s really at the heart of everything we do.” 

Toby speaks about how Toby’s Sports has impacted the lives of its customers, in particular, children. “We want as many people to enjoy sports and to gain all the benefits that you get from playing sports, especially kids,” he says. It is clearly something he is passionate about–and something he has experienced himself. 

“Growing up, playing sports as a kid,” he goes on, “I realized how much I learned. And that’s something every kid should experience, the discipline, focus, hard work, grit, determination, discipline that you learn playing sports. Especially team sports is something that will help you all throughout your life. That’s what really drives us.”

Yet as the tumultuous 80s and 90s passed, the child whose name was on the Toby’s Sports signage would grow up and become a man. And it would be his turn to discover himself, forge his own entrepreneurial path, and lead the company to fulfill its mission in uncertain times.

Valuable Experience

Despite knowing that he would one day join Toby’s Sports, after graduating with a Business Economics degree from the University of the Philippines, Toby decided to work elsewhere. It was a decision that the family supported.

“I was definitely very insistent on working somewhere else first,” he says, “to get exposure, to learn the ropes, to feel what the corporate environment was like.”

He found work in a leading FMCG company, handling one of its food brands. Toby says,  “I was lucky to get a job as a brand manager handling my own brand. And I had to do everything, you know, not just the advertising, the promo. I had to talk to salesmen. I had to talk to grocery supermarket owners. I was hanging posters from the supermarket ceiling myself.” He worked there for two years.

This experience proved to be so fundamental to Toby that the family decided to place it within its family constitution–a written set of rules that many family-owned businesses use to define succession and more.

Toby explains with pride, “Since I’m actually the first of the second generation to build the business there were no written rules yet. But I wanted to work outside and now after looking back, I see those two years that I worked outside as super beneficial… And now it’s in our family constitution that you must, if you want to join the business, you have to work three years outside. And if you want a certain level or rank in the company, you have to achieve that outside before you get that same rank in the company.”

Baptism into Entrepreneurship

Eventually, Toby Claudio joined the team at Toby’s Sports. From the starting gun, he learned the processes in place and designed new processes. Since the Internet was just starting, he set up the company’s IT group. And with his marketing experience, he immediately set up a marketing department.

Toby recalls, “My dad and uncles didn’t believe much [in marketing] or we didn’t need much marketing back in the day. But social media was starting, e-commerce was starting–sorry, the Internet was starting back then. So I started that. And then I set up our IT group also. I computerized the whole business, put in a point of sale and inventory management system. And that was great because it really helped me learn the business.” 

And yet, despite the smooth transition into the family business, Toby felt that there was something more that he had to do. He says, “For the first 10 years actually I still had that chip on my shoulder. I’m not really the founder of the store that has my name on it. I still am just the son of the owner. So I felt like there was something I needed to do, to prove still, because I didn’t do anything entrepreneurial like my dad and my uncles, nothing that was really risky.”

Toby shares that he would place one thing on his to-do list: “Think of a concept for a new business.” 

With this mission, Toby found himself on a website selling previously commissioned logos that would be no longer used. He recalls,” I saw a logo that caught my eye and it said RUNNR, R-U-N-N-R, with a really nice typeface and icon, nice colors…” 

That was where the concept of Toby’s new store began.

The founding of RUNNR couldn’t have come at a better time. Toby says, “It just so happened that I started running and I lived in BGC, and when I looked out my window every Saturday and Sunday you’d see a few hundred and then thousands of runners running around BGC every Saturday and Sunday. This was in early 2009.”

Critically, there was also an opportunity for a store concept that was forming in Toby’s mind.

He explains, “I learned that to be good at running, to enjoy it, you had to wear the right kind of shoes that were right for your foot and your gait, not just because it looked good. And there were many other things you need for running, especially proper technique, nutrition, training et cetera. 

“So RUNNR the logo became a concept for a running specialty store which, at the time, there was no evidence to show that that would be successful because running was less than 4% of our sales back in ‘09. But I got into it and I got hooked. And from not liking [running] to suddenly doing 5Ks, 10Ks, 21Ks. I became a full-blown runner, and I said, this was worth doing. This was worth sharing with other people, this passion, this new lifestyle is worth sharing with other people.”

With his resolve in place, a logo, and a presentation deck, Toby set out to make his store concept a reality. He presented the deck to Ayala, Fort Bonifacio, and asked for prime space along the booming location of Bonifacio High Street. And the developers said yes.

Six months later, after extensive research from the running Meccas of New York, LA, Boulder and Tokyo about the technology, equipment and customer service he wanted to provide, RUNNR opened.

“That was the day I became an entrepreneur,” Toby says. “I can’t forget that I was so nervous that day because prior to [RUNNR] I had not done anything like that. And I had no idea if it would be successful. I was scared it would fail but as fate would have it, on opening day we had the line outside and the store, and when we cut the ribbon… it was Fernando [Zobel] [triathlete and former President and CEO of Ayala Corporation] who cut the ribbon for us. And as soon as he entered the store and went around for the first time, he came to me and said, ‘You know, whenever I travel abroad, whatever city I’m in, I go to the best running store in the city. And this is the best I’ve ever seen.’”

RUNNR proved to be a success on a scale that Toby’s Sports had never seen before.

“That store, RUNNR, the first one, went on to set all the records for us. Fastest ROI. I think we recovered our investment in three months. It was our most profitable store for many years, even being a small store. It went on to win… outstanding Filipino retailer and finally Ayala Store of the Year, which is a huge thing because that means it competes against even the foreign concepts. So RUNNR was my baptism into entrepreneurship.”

Innovative Store Concepts

Once bitten by the entrepreneurial bug, Toby Claudio continued to create new store concepts. Next on his to-do list was urbanAtheltics.

He says, “[urbanAthletics] came soon after RUNNR because I realized that hey, it’s fun coming up with something new. I really enjoyed the journey I had with RUNNR. So I immediately looked for something new…”

“So urbanAthletics is for the younger, trendier, fashion-oriented sports enthusiast who likes to wear sports-inspired fashion, especially sneakers,” Toby continues. “And you know, especially since COVID, everyone’s been dressing down, wearing more athleisure styles. So urbanAthletics was our platform to cater to that market and to carry products that we wouldn’t normally carry in our Toby’s stores or RUNNR stores, more fashion-oriented styles.”

Toby Claudio’s entrepreneurial streak doesn’t end with store concepts; he has also pursued other passion projects. One of these is Trail Solutions, a project he embarked upon with friends and family who are also mountain bikers to create mountain bike parks in the Philippines.

“We love mountain biking but there really was no dedicated and purpose-built mountain bike park in the Philippines,” Toby says with regret. “So the vision was to come up with a company who could actually build…properly designed mountain bike parks in the Philippines. So we came up with Trail Solutions and now we’re on our fourth build, and our biggest one to date, which is the Timberland Mountain Bike Park in San Mateo Rizal for the Filinvest Group in the Timberland Highlands Resort… and it’s the best mountain bike park, I would like to think, in this part of the world. It’s a world-class destination.”

The Future of Toby’s Sports

While RUNNR and urbanAthletics are each crucial parts of the portfolio of the Quorom Group, of which Toby Claudio is President, Toby’s Sports remains the G.O.A.T., the core business. And Toby has played an important role in ensuring it will remain so in the future.

“It’s our biggest with 50 plus stores,” he says. “We really have changed and evolved over the years. We’ve reformatted many times. We’ve also rebranded a few times. And each time we do, it’s with the intent to bring it a level up, bring it a step up.”

Raising the game of Toby’s Sports means many things, such as improving the experience in the stores and continuing expansion.

“We added interactivity, like the basketball court,” Toby says, with the court behind him in the store. “ We had a badminton court also, a rock climbing wall. And that’s more to inspire people. When you can play sports, you can enjoy and have fun in the store, it inspires you. It gets you excited to play.”

When it comes to growing Toby’s Sports, it’s not just about increasing the number of stores. It’s also about improving the experience. Toby explains, “Aside from expanding our store footprint, opening more stores, especially in the provinces, we’re continuing to build bigger stores like these flagship stores. We now have three of them.”

But beyond the physical stores, what is most important for Toby’s Stores is its growth in e-commerce, an initiative Toby began in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, accelerated by consumer behavior during the pandemic, online sales have exploded. It continues to drive the growth of Toby’s Sports today.

“Our biggest push is to serve the customer,” he says, “anywhere they are, 24/7 through our online stores. We now have five online shops, three of our own plus two flagship stores in the marketplaces.” 

This e-commerce push is more than just simple online selling through the usual digital marketplaces. Toby explains, “Our websites themselves are really our big focus because it’s something that we treated as a new business. It’s not just, ‘Oh let’s have a website and start an e-commerce site.’ I really treated it as [if] we had to learn a new business. E-commerce is totally different from physical retailing.”

Once again, by treating e-commerce as a new business, Toby Claudio displayed his entrepreneurial mindset.

“We set up a whole different team,” he says. “We set up our own logistics. We do our own marketing. We handle our websites ourselves. So we didn’t outsource it. We didn’t give our customers to the marketplaces. We really wanted to have a direct relationship with our customers. So that’s where a lot of our efforts are going now, into improving tobys.com and our other websites.”

What Drives You?

For Toby Claudio, it took 10 years working in the company his father founded for him to hit his entrepreneurial stride. But once he did, he proved to be unstoppable. What advice would he give other entrepreneurs?

“You really have to know your ‘Why,’ what drives you,” Toby says, “And knowing what drives you and what you’re excited to wake up to do every day is really important because that’s probably what you should be doing. That’s probably the kind of business that you should start.” 

He adds, “…any business, along the way, will become difficult. At the start, in the middle, when it’s already up, there will always be times that it’s gonna get hard. And the only way you’re gonna get through that is if you believe in what you’re doing.”

Finally, Toby Claudio ends with a parting shot at the buzzer from the great Michael Jordan, saying, “I also believe you miss a hundred percent of the shots you don’t take, as per Michael Jordan. And if you take shots, they miss. You still have other chances to do it. I’d rather not regret not taking the risk, rather than regretting later on that I should have done something but I was too scared to do it.”

Text VINCENT SALES

Photography ED SIMON of KLIQ, INC

Videography EXCEL PANLAQUE of KLIQ, INC

Art Direction MARC YELLOW

Sittings Editor RJ LEDESMA

Shoot Coordination TONI MENDOZA

Shot on Location TOBY’S SPORTS FLAGSHIP STORE, BGC