Echostore is the first of its kind in the Philippines—retail outlets that are all about fair-trade items that are good for the environment and also good for you. Featuring items like bags made from recycled tarpaulins, snacks made out of malunggay, jams and jellies made by small farms, and eco-friendly cleaning products, it is a shop with a conscience.

After opening their first retail space in Serendra, Echostore has grown by leaps and bounds. They opened a second branch in Podium last November, and they are also present in two of the Shangri-la hotels: a bigger store at Mactan in Cebu and a dedicated shelf in the souvenir shop in Makati. Their original concept has also spun off into several different arms, all still standing by their original philosophy of helping communities.

Big Idea
Lifelong friends, Jeannie Javelosa, Chit Juan, and Reena Francisco were looking for something meaningful to do for "the second half of their lives." Each having had their own professional successes in various fields, they felt it was time to give back and do something for others. Thus, Echostore, was born. Built around the idea of a sustainable lifestyle, Echostore's logo features three swirls coming from a core center, which stands for the three parts of the puzzle: the self, the community, and the planet. As Jeannie eloquently puts it, "Sustainability means you're also good to yourself. You nurture the self into wellness and wholeness. Once you're okay and whole, you reach out to communities. And communities come together for fair trade, poverty alleviation, and together you look at the bigger picture which is the planet."

The Brand
They knew right off the bat that the store would evolve around the idea of sustainability, involving a deep environmental consciousness, a dedication to wellness, and a commitment to helping communities. While trying to think of names for the store, instead of going with the more commonly used term "eco", they decided to make it "echo." According to Jeannie, the word has a deeper meaning for them: "It's like we want to echo and make everybody follow the concept… the acronym means environment community hope organization."

 

Big Moment
The store was up and running one month after they came up with the idea. "The funny thing is, we didn't expect it to catch like wildfire," says Jeannie. "We realized we'd stepped into a void. It's a void to speak about environment, about wellness, about everything that a sustainable lifestyle stands for. Even the word sustainability hasn't really ever been used in a retail setting."

Three months after opening, Echostore won "Best Concept" at the "Business In Development" competition run by the Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP). As their prize, the Echostore ladies got to go to Amsterdam to represent the country. Their trip was a learning experience in and of itself. They found a wealth of fair-trade stores in Amsterdam and realized that it was a network with strong potential if they ever wanted to bring Philippine-made fair-trade products to Europe.

Next: The secret to their success

Setbacks & Lessons
There are several challenges involved in running a retail operation revolving around community-based, sustainable products. For one, being community-based, stock is not always consistently available. "Sometimes you want to have [stock], but there's none," Jeannie shares. For another, the fact that the products are made by hand means that if you buy six of the same item, they won't look exactly the same. The expectations here are different from mass-produced items, and they are still trying to change the way consumers think about buying handmade products.

Another problem they often encountered at the start was the unmarketability of the products of certain communities. The products were good in and of themselves, but more often than not, the packaging was not up to par and that meant that the products were ultimately not salable. To address this, Echostore—banking on the graphic design backgrounds of both Reena and Jeannie—launched Echo Design Lab, which mentors communities in the areas of product development, packaging, and branding.

Future Plans
They are looking into setting up more Echostore branches, but being a social enterprise whose main goal is not profit, rent is a challenge. They are, however, looking into opening more branches of Echo Village Store. The Echo Village Store started as a partnership with the Peace and Equity Foundation (PEF). Groups under the foundation are assisted by Echo Design Lab in product development; the products they manufacture are then sold at Echo Village Stores. They plan to open more locations where groups of PEF are based, such as Palawan and Bacolod.

Golden Rule
The Echostore entrepreneurs believe in having strength in numbers and in their "power of three." Each happens to have a unique skill that the other ones can't do too well; each person's skills complements the others. Jeannie is the communicator with a background in public relations, Chit specializes in marketing, and Reena does operations. Jeannie says, "There's a healthy respect for each one's professionalism. I bow to Chit and Reena with certain things I know I can't do. I think that's the beauty of it."

At the end of the day, though, Jeannie is a firm believer that there is a bigger force behind all of their success. "All of this was just given. God's really the CEO and we're just the management team."

Photography by Mark Ches Ang