I remember how, during the pandemic, my heart broke. My story is not unique, for I know many entrepreneurs who went this same route. But this is my story.

During the pandemic, I made a decision to stop the GREAT Women textile business that I was so immersed with. We had been working with close to 40 weaving communities and had an international market opening through our project with Christian Louboutin and his Manilacaba in 2017 to 2018. I was already meeting Filipino designers in the United Arab Emirates (Michel Cinco and Furne One among the more notable ones) for international markets.

I had to stop it all. I remember trying to hold back tears when I would receive texts from our indigenous weavers asking if we wanted to continue buying their textiles. How could I? With everything at standstill and lock-ins, plus a stock for a second fashion show and a whole room full of beautiful handwoven textiles… everything went full stop.

Entrepreneurs go through such reflection when one suffers a loss in business. But I guess because GREAT Women textiles was a socially impactful endeavor, it was doubly harder to take the loss. I mourned for this because there were so many lives involved that were hinged on this livelihood of weaving. And unlike other designers who would support one or two communities, GREAT Women took on a national network of close to 40 weaving groups per our data showed.

Our back-end work on the development side involved technical checks with threads and looms, to market training for sales and order-taking, coloration and trends-directed textiles planning and financial literary for our weavers, plus processes that included creative ways for loans to get threads to them. Partnerships with government (Philippine Textile Research Institute or PTRI) and technical schools were signed, too, to create the first micro-yarn facility, especially in Iloilo. (I also had to find a way to get out of this during the pandemic). But we had to sell, sell, sell textiles and textile products, too — an upward challenge for such a small local market then.

Throughout the lockdown, I attempted to sell the textiles just to recoup the capital. To known designers like Rhett Eala, we promised our unique Bagobo Tagabawa contemporary textiles so he could get them whenever he could sell his tops. Other designers who sold pieces at the high-end Artefino Fair came and went home with our textiles. I created a whole set of home pieces (cushions, bedcovers, table-textiles) which are used now at Banahaw Circle Nature Retreat in Mount Banahaw in Dolores, Quezon, another endeavor I started with two friends during the pandemic.