“Cebu comfort pieces for world celebs”

Posted: 29 Oct 2010 09:26 AM PDT

THEY DO NOT KNOW Giorgio Armani. But the 10 young men, aged between 18 and 24 years, produce high-quality throw pillows and cushions for the furniture pieces ordered by the world-renowned fashion designer, as well as other famous celebrities abroad.

They are employees and trainees of Filo D'Oro, subcontractor and partner-company of Interior Crafts of the Islands Inc. (ICI), a Cebu-based company owned by topnotch Cebuano furniture designer Kenneth Cobonpue.

"We often joke that our products are better than us in terms of traveling. They have reached places while we're only here in Cebu. It makes us feel really proud that famous people sit on the cushions that we make," says Rail Ortiz, 20, who started training in sewing when he was 16.

Eleuterio Bravo, founder of Filo D'Oro, says the sewers were endorsed to him by different religious organizations in Cebu. Most of them do not want to go to school and opt to look for jobs, he adds.

Four are full-time employees who receive regular monthly salaries and other benefits. The rest are trainees who may accept other jobs.

All of them live in the same house, which is also Filo D'Oro's production area and the ancestral house of the Cobonpues in Barangay Lahug in Cebu City.

Beginning

The partnership between Filo D'Oro and Cobonpue started with the friendship of Bravo, a native of Pangasinan who has since made Cebu his home, and the furniture designer in the early 1990s. Bravo first went to Cebu as the youth coordinator of the Focolare Movement, of which Cobonpue is an active member.

(The Focolare Movement, founded in 1944 in Trent, Italy, as a Catholic lay organization, has grown into an ecumenical spiritual organization now found in 182 countries. It promotes unity and universal brotherhood among different Christian denominations and those of Jewish faith, according to its website http://www.focolare.org.)

As Focolare members, Bravo says he and Cobonpue worked together organizing concerts and other activities to raise funds for the group's projects.

"We became good friends and we thought of organizing projects that will help the youth," said Bravo, who studied design in Florence, Italy, in the 1980s.

Bravo formed a group that sewed school and tournament uniforms, bags and T-shirts in the early 1990s. By the time the World Youth Day was held in the Philippines in 1994, Bravo was asked to return to Manila and help in the preparations.

Friendship

In 2005, he opened a Focolare Center in Baguio City. He went back to Cebu in 2006 while managing youth affairs in Cebu and Panay.

He continued what he started—sewing and designing bags and clothing—with young men as apprentices in the old Coaco building in Barangay Mabolo in Cebu City. But the project was not sustainable since they did not have a target market.

The Cobonpues provided financial assistance to the project, which the group invested in sewing machines, Bravo says.

"It was in 2007 when Kenneth said that a German consultant was here to help them with community projects so the team came and assessed us. They told us that the only way for us to grow was to get a partner company," Bravo says.

The German consultant was sent to work on the Strategic Corporate-Community Partnership for Local Development Program of the German Development Service.

On face value, he says, there was no connection between their products and Cobonpue's company. For a while, Bravo had thought that his group must really work harder to look for partners.

Partnership
The link with Cobonpue's company came in the form of throw pillows.

"Furniture pieces need throw pillows so Kenneth said, 'Why don't we supply the throw pillows?' From there, we moved on to produce the cushion for small furniture items like that of the dragnet lounge chair," Bravo says.

From a simple philanthropic endeavor, a business partnership with the Cobonpues was established.

In 2009, they moved to the ancestral house of the Cobonpues in Lahug and set up their own production area.

Bravo says he has a team of hardworking people who know how to save materials.

Ortiz is in charge of determining the materials to be used for the cushions and throw pillows.

ICI creative director Estela Ocampo-Fernandez says the company likes Filo D'Oro because its employees make full use of the materials provided to them. "They economize and save materials," she adds.

Bravo says discipline and brotherhood are values inculcated among the young men for them to do their work well.

Ortiz, for instance, started training for sewing when he was still 16. He did not like it at first, thinking that sewing was just for girls.

"Later, when I realized I was learning, I realized that sewing is not bad after all. Now that we know our products are bought by famous people, it tells me, that I am lucky to be doing this job," he says.

Further, he says, working for Filo D'Oro made him widen his horizons. He took the Alternative Learning System exam on October 3, hoping to proceed to college and study chemical engineering.

"I love calculating. I love math. That is why I want to study chemical engineering," Ortiz says.

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