Out of Work With an Empty Mall Unit, He Started Toby’s Sports
Bobby Claudio helped bring 5,000 delegates to the Philippines for the Jaycees World Congress. The event went smoothly. Afterward he had no job, because he had resigned from his.
His work and the Jaycees had already collided once. His employer, a multinational, told him to choose between the job and Jaycees duties after his absences for an international Jaycees event piled up. He took a week to decide and chose the Jaycees.
He bought the unit to resell it
Claudio had a small amount of savings. He used it to buy a commercial space in Virra Mall, Greenhills. The plan was real estate. He wanted to hold the unit and resell it once the mall was finished.
He had never worked in retail and did not intend to start. But the unit came with monthly amortization, and once the Congress was over the space sat empty while the payments continued. He decided he had to start something.
He started with toys
There was no market study and no business plan. Claudio loved kids and had a young son, so he bought toys. The shop sold Mickey Mouse items and imported Disney products from a corner of Greenhills Shopping Center. He named it Toby’s Forms and Shapes, after his eldest son, who was five at the time.
It opened without fanfare, and nobody predicted what it would become.
Skateboards sold through the holidays
The first sports item the shop carried was a skateboard. Skateboards kept selling after the holiday season ended, and that was when Claudio saw the potential in sporting goods.
Customers then started asking for tennis rackets, and he began selling them. He became the store’s first racquet stringer. His brothers, who were co-founders, learned to change grips. The family played badminton, golf and basketball.
About a year in, he reformatted the shop around sports. The family had lived on the Stanford campus while Toby’s mother did her doctorate, and the large sports stores he saw in the US stayed with him. Manila had no sporting goods store at the time.
What the unit became
The brothers grew the shop into a chain. At its 40th anniversary in 2018, the company had more than 50 stores and a BGC flagship set to open that October. By its 45th anniversary in 2023, it reported 63 stores, more than 100,000 items and over 160 brands. In 2024 Toby’s Sports was named Sporting Goods Retailer of the Year, Philippines, at the Retail Asia Awards.
Claudio’s son Toby is president of the parent company, Quorum International. At the 2018 anniversary, the company said Claudio “retired his jersey” and passed the torch to the next generation. He was later elected president of the Philippine Retailers Association for 2023 to 2025.
