“Sapatero” was how the great man, Henry Sy Sr. used to be described back when his eldest daughter, Teresita “Tessie” Sy-Coson, was a young girl learning the ropes of the humble business her parents and maternal grandfather established in Manila.

In her life, Tessie has found herself steering the wheel, so to speak, when circumstances would have led weaker beings to lose control. Not “TSC,” as she is referred to in the vast empire she leads today.

Stories have been told of how the eldest of six children of Henry Sy Sr. and Felicidad Tan Sy had been exposed to the business her father and maternal grandfather ran when she was very young.

At age five, she would accompany her grandfather to the bank, and there she soaked in the cool air, and perhaps ran her observant eye quietly while waiting for him to finish his business.

While she helped customers’ kids select footwear in their small shoe stores at the age of eight, she actually started working when she was 13 years old, Sy-Coson revealed in an interview in July last year.

“We were a family business, and all of us had to help out so that it wasn’t just our parents working,” she told host Tony Lopez in an interview streamed by the Presidential Communications Office.

She said she and her siblings were tasked with various aspects of the business, assisting with inventory or manning the cashier, while some of her siblings did some work in areas like warehousing, among other things.

Early on, she learned about hard work and perseverance — the sacrifices it took, and the sense of duty it entailed. From her father, she gained insights into what the market needed, and based on how she steered the company after his death, she knew it was not always about profit margins.

Her father was very observant, she narrated in the same interview. He felt the pulse of the masses, and from him she honed a sense of responsibility and community that she would bring into all the ventures she would eventually lead later in life.

Patience was another virtue that has served them well. “Change doesn’t come overnight. …it needs patience. It needs consistency. It can be done over a certain period of time. So I would say that if there are some people who are… not so happy with the situations. I would say that maybe the best is just change the mindset. The system has been there for quite some time. And even for us in the private sector, it takes us a while to grow our business as well. So I think we just have to be more patient.”

She was 22 when her father — “Tatang,” as the pioneering tycoon came fondly to be known — established the first SM department store in Manila just two months after Martial Law had been declared. Within a decade, he managed to open more stores, and by 1983, work began on what would be the first of the SM supermalls in the country.

Working through crisis

Sy-Coson recalled how her father saw opportunities in challenging times, pursuing growth even through economic crises. Two of its largest malls — Megamall and Mall of Asia — were acquired during economic slumps, and when nobody could imagine these giant ideas to fly, they proved everyone wrong.

SM North Edsa, when it opened in 1985, became the first of many converging points for people from all walks of life. It served the growing market, indeed, but also provided a marketplace for entrepreneurs. This was also the model that Sy-Coson built on when she steered the SM group through difficult times during and soon after the pandemic.

Facing over 200 young Filipino-Chinese entrepreneurs of the Anvil Business Club in May 2024, she said, “Our father died in 2019. The global pandemic hit 2020 to 2022. I was then always worried if Dad’s most beloved retail business would fail during my management… We really went to work during that crisis. One month after, we got rid of a lot of inventories and did a lot of things. After the pandemic… it is a very different world now.”

For Sy-Coson, everything seemed to lead to the moment she would take the reins. “I was 22 when my father asked me [to] handle SM in Echague, Manila; that was 5,000 square meters. I thought then that I could handle it. I learned from my executives. Then I was asked to handle SM Makati, which was 22,000 square meters. Some people at that time even asked us to pay them (so they’d do business there). I had to learn and had to eat some humble pie in those early days,” she said in the same forum.”

But one thing she knew was to keep going — persevere, “cope and learn.”

And learn she did, realizing along the way that “In all things, you cannot do it alone.” Guided by the vision her father began in his day, she steered a growing corporation to various milestones that made the SM group by far the biggest in the country in terms of market capitalization.

Sy-Coson’s leadership brought the SM group to new heights through ventures with high growth opportunities and innovations that showed her keen sense of direction. The group, today, caters to practically the entire country with malls, hotels, residences, banks and property developments that serve the needs of citizens, young and old.

With her siblings Elizabeth Sy, Henry Sy Jr., Hans Sy, Herbert Sy, and Harley Sy and the next-generation Sys, the SM group continues to grow and spread, proving just how it had become and remains a key part of the Filipino culture and landscape.

Under her watch, SM transcended the perception of being a mere hub for consumerism. From providing venues and spaces for people, to offering opportunities for enterprise, the group has helped foster community and caring.

How did she do it? Sy-Coson, in 2003, lost her husband, lumber magnate Louis Coson, to an illness. It was a year that one may rightly imagine dug deep into her being, as she also was at a point leading key areas of the family business.

Changing mindset

The mom of three has consistently stood as a core of strength in such times, guided perhaps by an enduring faith nurtured in the schools she attended in her youth: the Immaculate Conception Academy–Greenhills in San Juan City and Assumption College San Lorenzo where she earned a degree in commerce.

“I’d like to show that with a positive attitude, we really can grow… In this time when there are a lot of maybe discontent, it’s a matter of how you look at things. If you look at things more positively, and you can continue to do what you are doing, we can grow. I think we have to change our mindset and look at things from a more positive light. Really, on balance, this is a good country. The economy is very strong,” she said.

It seems the low-key leader, simple in her style and straightforward in her ways, saw fit to share her wisdom during these transformative times, once again leading with the firm belief that with hard work and perseverance — and a forward mindset — there can be opportunities for growth for everyone.

“(My father) always believed in the Philippines. And he always told us when we were growing up that this is the place where we should grow old. This is a place that we should grow. And so where we are right now, it shows what he was envisioning was correct. So all those times, we just kept on rolling and rolling. And that’s how we grow.”

“In fact, he had so much faith in the Filipino.”

“None of us graduated in the US or other countries. He said this is where we should work and learn,” she said in the Malacañang interview.

SM Retail Inc., the Philippines’ leading retailer with an eye toward 100 malls by 2027, is not just a chain of structures serving consumerism. Under the stewardship of Sy-Coson and her well-chosen core leaders, it has become part of the fabric of Filipino lives.

The SM group has worked hard to establish a reputation that transcends its initial banner of “we’ve got it all for you.” It has shown a propensity to care, to give back, to support small entrepreneurs and to be a responsible corporate citizen.

The acquisition of the Philippine Geothermal Production Co. in April 2022 was “part of SM’s vision to lower its carbon footprint.” The SM Foundation, during the pandemic, donated billions of pesos worth of vaccines, medical supplies and so forth to medical institutions.

Under her leadership, Sy-Coson has managed to infuse heart into a vast conglomerate, with actions speaking louder than words.

For taking the SM group to new heights through various local and global challenges, well-deserved were her triumphs as Asia’s Best CEO and the Asian Corporate Director of the Year award from Corporate Governance Asia.

But the woman accorded the “Outstanding Exemplar in the Private Sector” award for SM Foundation’s programs and as one among Forbes’ list of Asia’s Top 15 philanthropists has, more than these accolades, proven herself not just a Sy able to fill her father’s big shoes, but also to run with it — in her own way, on her own terms.