Weaving Wonders
EMPOWERING WOMEN, STRENGTHENING THE FILIPINO FAMILY
BY JONATHAN L. MAYUGA

KALIBO, Aklan - When Javier and Anna India Legaspi started their small business of weaving pineapple and abaca fiber, all they wanted was to make a living.
Heritage Arts & Crafts soon grew over the years, with the couple’s virtues of hard work, patience and dedication.
Today, around 200 women from different parts of the province, once strictly housewives dependent on the income of their husbands, are now earning their own income from weaving inside their homes.
The industry has empowered women, who are no longer dependent on their husbands’ earnings.
The company now exports various hand-woven products to the United States, Columbia, France, Italy and Japan.
Undeniably, Heritage Arts & Crafts is now a major dollar-earner in the pineapple and abaca fiber weaving industry, bringing in an estimated US$50,000 annually—not bad for a small family business with humble beginnings.
“Hard work and dedication is the only real investment we made,” Javier said.
Javier, a native of Kalibo, Aklan, like his wife India, started their business with only one weaver—a housewife, whose hobby is weaving. From weaving simple table clothes and place mats out of abaca and pineapple fiber, the company now produces pineapple seda, banana seda, fine abaca and ply hemp cloth, abaca ribbons, pineapple seda scarves and shawls. They also export crochet hats, embroideries, fiber arts, paintings and many mores.
Partnership made in heaven
IN 1989, the couple’s “partnership” literally went beyond their vows of marriage when they decided to put up the business and became business partners.
The couple now has a pool of more than 200 weavers, who went though skills training and personal supervision by the couple.
“I was already planning to accept my father’s offer to migrate to the United States but eventually, I decided to stay with my wife. That was the time when we decided to start the business,” he said. The 60-year-old Javier, a mechanical engineering graduate, is the company’s chief executive officer while India, a fine arts graduate, is the artist.
“I consider myself a jack-of-all-trades but I am more of a manager. I manage the business while my wife, besides helping me run the business, works as our artist. She makes the designs based on the concepts of our clients,” he said.
From nothing to something
Weaving, Javier admitted, is not a full-time work. Weavers do not receive monthly salary as they only get paid based on what they produce.
“Put it this way. After doing their chores at home, mothers usually do nothing but watch television or look after their young children play. They can do that while weaving. They earn something out of it and become even more productive,” he said.
Skillful weavers who weave faster can earn more than minimum daily-wage earners, says Javier.
“Our company makes sure that our weavers earn enough to raise and send their children to a decent school,” he said.
Self-sustaining business
According to India, since they are making use of abaca and pineapple fibers, their business helps farmers boost their income in a way.
“We use natural materials. Local farmers grow abaca and pineapple and supply the raw materials to us. Sometimes, their wives are the ones weaving for us,” India said.
“That’s one way of making life self-sustaining in Aklan,” he added. “We discourage urban migration. We make sure that resources are well within reach,” he said.
Although most of the company’s products are exported, some of their products are sold locally and find their way to the local marketplace.
Empowering women
The couple adopted the business concept of outsourcing which, besides providing housewives a part-time job, preserves the Filipino family’s culture and tradition.
“We conduct training to enhance their skills and we provided them handlooms for weaving. Most women take care of their children at home while their husbands go to work. Since they can’t go to work because of the household chores, we thought of bringing in the work to their homes,” he explained.
India, for her part, said that as a woman and a mother, she understands her fellow mothers who want to be productive and help put food on the table, without having to sacrifice their roles as mother to their children and wife to their husband.
Heritage Arts & Craft maintains a small shop on L. Barrios Street in Kalibo, Aklan, where only a handful of weavers, mostly young and single women, work. Others also work in the office as clerks or marketing or sales assistants, but the rest of the pack stays at home, weaving abaca and pineapple fiber.
Strengthening Filipino family
Weavers work under the precept of pakyawan, which means they get paid for the kind of product and the volume of the products they produce.
Pakyawan is an old system developed and introduced by Chinese businessmen under the precept of “pay for work.”
India, who usually makes the designs, personally supervises the weavers at the small shop, and gives the weavers tips on how to do job faster and better.
She also visits weavers in their homes to check if they are doing well and to make sure that the production is well within target schedules.
One advantage of the pakyawan system over arawan, wherein employees or workers get paid on a daily basis, is that the families can help together to do the job making every member of the family more productive at home.
“They can teach every member of the family to weave and help finish the job early. The more productive they are, the more they earn. That’s very helpful because even their children can weave when the mothers do the chores.” Javier said.
In strengthening the Filipino family, he said, they encourage teamwork among family members. “Father, mother and children work together,” he said.
Making business manageable
Keeping the business small throughout the years, says Javier, is the secret of their humble success.
“We don’t produce products without an assured market. Our production is based only on the orders,” he said.
He said the company has very few stocks. However, he added that when orders do come in, they make sure that they can produce the quantity based on the export quality standards the company is known for. In fact, he said they only spend only around P100,000 to P200,000 a month for supply of raw materials which they produce, based on orders from abroad.
Javier said keeping the business small also avoids a lot of problems normally encountered when business grows bigger and bigger.
Rivalry, he said, is one of them. Investment, he added, is also small if the business is small. Nevertheless, he said, the business can be productive and revenue-generating.
“Investment is small if you keep the business small,” he said. According to the couple, they don’t intend to force an expansion. “We want the market to decide. If the orders grow, then that’s the time we will have to grow,” he said.
Right now, the couple said it is all right for them to do business to make a living—for them and at least the families of their more than 200 weavers.