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“My parents live in Nueva Ecija, a few hours away from Metro Manila. I visit them every weekend. During one of my trips, I met a small family selling handcrafted rattan baskets. They were facing a hard time because of the pandemic, which significantly impacted small and traditional businesses like theirs. Having a deep love for plants and driven by my passion to help people, I helped them sell a few baskets to people I knew back in Manila, marketing them to my fellow ‘plantita’ (plant-lovers) friends as visually pleasing plant stands and pots. In that first round, we sold over 50 baskets in a span of two hours! That’s when I realized there was an untapped market for their products and an opportunity to bring the business online to help them ride out the storm. Together with the weavers, we conceptualized designs and our little venture, Plantris, was born.
In the course of almost two years of operation, we’ve grown our team to over 200 weavers and counting. We’ve been able to scale the business and sell over 3,000 pieces of products a month through both distributors and our website. Still, I think of this as just the start for Plantris; we launched our first Plantris Café in Nueva Ecija last January and are planning to open more in the future. We have also been creating more designs, branching out from rattan plant stands to rattan furniture, home décor and kitchenware.
Of course, this success didn’t come overnight. We’ve run into our fair share of challenges in the early days, including those involving logistics operations and ensuring proper training for our staff. Weaving is a local art form – production of a basket can take anywhere from a few days to a month – and this local craft should be preserved and maintained. We want to make sure that we give our people enough guidance and training to be able to create these one-of-a-kind pieces.
I’m thankful and humbled by the lessons I’ve learned so far, both as an account manager and as an entrepreneur. I’m grateful that our small venture has been able to make an impact in a lot of ways – Plantris has not only helped provide a livelihood for hundreds of people but it has also contributed to elevating local Filipino products, highlighting local craftsmanship and bringing them to a wider audience.”
Compiled and prepared by Mina Cunanan from the Lazada communications team in the Philippines.
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