Globe Business Interview Transcript with HTP Basics and Looca for Gift Local

About the Business:

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1. How does your business model integrate grassroots communities in your value chain?

2. What are the profiles of communities that benefit from your business model?

3. What is the impact of your business to these communities? (Describe their pain points and how your business was able to help address these challenges)

4. Why did you choose this kind of business model?

5. What is sustainability for your company?

HTP Basics

Launched in 2020 as an offshoot of the thriving local fashion brand HTP Clothing, HTP Basics offers a wide range of classic fashion essentials for everyone’s wardrobe. While it carries the same passion for fashion, it is driven by a different purpose—to help its distributors and resellers start their own business by selling high-quality and affordable basic pieces that everyone loves.

Looca Skincare

Looca Skincare boasts a range of products made from gentle, alcohol-free, cruelty-free, paraben-free, and vegan-friendly ingredients that make for a clean and fun skincare routine. From its labels down to the packaging, everything about the brand is locally made, which means every purchase made helps sustain an ecosystem of small Filipino businesses behind the product. The company is also open for resellers, helping them jumpstart their own business with Looca and its sister brand, HTP Basics’ stable community of customers.

1. How does your business model integrate grassroots communities in your value chain?

For every town, city, and province in the Philippines, there are HTP Basics/Looca Distributors and Resellers thriving despite the pandemic. No matter how rural the place is, the potential of HTP Basics/Looca business is high since we are operating it almost purely online. In HTP Basics and Looca, we put the utmost importance to honesty and integrity. When we tell aspiring entrepreneurs that we are here to help them jumpstart their own business the best way we can, we say it with confidence because we know how efficient our business model is.

2. What are the profiles of communities that benefit from your business model?

HTP Basics and Looca products are manufactured through a third-party local supplier. We also have in-house employees who benefit from our business operations. Since our launch, we have partnered with Distributors and Resellers who offer our product to the consumers and earn from the profit margin provision from HTP Basics Main Office and Looca HQ.

3. What is the impact of your business to these communities? (Describe their pain points and how your business was able to help address these challenges)

One thing that the pandemic taught us is that every day is uncertain. What is essential today, may not be essential tomorrow. What is profitable today, may not be profitable tomorrow. Therefore, the primary goal of our business is to help our distributors and resellers to have a side hustle. Some of them had to quit their jobs due to the pandemic and some tried to find other ways to support their families aside from having a fulltime job. Through HTP Basics/Looca, they are able to spend more time with their family while earning at the comfort of their homes.

4. Why did you choose this kind of business model?

Our CIO opted to choose a business model that provides livelihood to more people and an opportunity to aspiring entrepreneurs to build their own business without starting from scratch. Our team believes that success comes from being able to share your own business and success with other people.

Meanwhile, HTP Basics and Looca offers a distributorship program which consists of distributors and resellers. We chose this model because it provides a quick and inexpensive route to business ownership for aspiring entrepreneurs.

5. What is sustainability for your company?

Sustainability for Looca is being able to produce clothing and skincare items by using our resources efficiently. We uphold the values of integrity and honesty in doing business. Thus, we provide products that are in line with these. Looca, in all our products, remains to be cruelty-free, vegan friendly, paraben-free, and alcohol-free. Most of our ingredients are plant-based and proven safe for the environment.

For HTP Basics, Sustainability is supporting slow and easy fashion while maximizing the resources you have. All our clothes are also in line with classic fashion. We know that amidst the ephemeral trends, some pieces may trend for a short span, but basics will forever remain supreme. In HTP, we use high quality materials and we do not just throw away the excess fabric, instead, we use it to produce small items such as scrunchies, scarf, and kids’ clothes.

Globe Business supports HTP Basics and Looca by providing them digital solutions such as ROPO, which provides end-to-end e-commerce implementation and support from website set-up, design, development, and management to photoshoot services, graphic design, and content creation to expand their presence on digital. They also use GCash for their business to facilitate fast and safe cashless transactions for their consumers.

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