ETSUKA’S ORIGIN STORY: THE 90-DAY CHALLENGE ($200 to $200,000 in 90 days)

Etsuka was born out of a bet. Yes, you heard that right. A bet!

It was a bet between Harry and I. The challenge was to build a brand with P10,000 pesos ($175) and transform this to P10 million valuation ($175,000) in just 90 days. 

Long story short, I made it happen!

At that time, Harry and I were still working on another product. We were making videos for small business owners. In order for us to understand their struggle, we decided to open a brand so we can go through what these business owners are going through. 

To our surprise, Etsuka grew so fast that we decided to focus on it entirely.

The magic behind the success of Etsuka lies in the fact that we solved a huge problem in the fashion industry: serving people who are petite (read: cute size) and also mid-size/plus-size like herself.

As a short person, buying pants is always a struggle. I always need to cut my pants short. The first collection I released are pants with 18 sizes - 9 for short people, 9 for tall people. It turned out that my problem is a problem faced by thousands of women all around the world. 

On top of solving a problem, another reason why Etsuka also grew is because we are using  beautiful fabrics loved by a lot of people - vintage kimonos. These are high quality silk with handpainted designs that are usually just thrown away or kept in the cabinets, never to see the light of day. 

Now, the goal is to grow Etsuka even more so that more people can experience the beautiful feeling of wearing clothes that fit them well.

Because that’s how clothes should be: they should fit us, not the other way around.