The BGC Opening: Notes from the First Week

We opened our Bonifacio Global City boutique on a Tuesday morning in March. By eleven o'clock, there was a queue outside.

We had not expected this. BGC is a competitive retail environment — sophisticated, demanding, accustomed to international brands with significant marketing budgets. We are a brand that does not advertise in the conventional sense. The queue surprised us.

The first week was instructive in other ways too. Customers who came in knowing us — who had been wearing PabDer for years and were simply glad to have a boutique nearby — behaved differently from those who were discovering us for the first time. The former went immediately to specific pieces; the latter moved slowly, touching materials, asking questions.

The questions were good ones. How is this made? Where does the leather come from? Can this be repaired? These are the questions we most want to answer, and the boutique environment allows us to answer them properly — not with a label or a website page, but with a conversation, a demonstration, the ability to hold the object and feel what it is.

The BGC boutique is now our second-largest space. It will take time to become fully itself — boutiques, like shoes, require breaking in. But the first week suggested that BGC customers know what they are looking for, and that what we make is what some of them have been looking for.