As a Queer, Fil-Am business owner, inclusion has always been a core value of mine. When I initially started Perfectly Pinay, I wanted to center the Filipina-American experience and promote Pinay visibility through my online presence and products. I wanted to bring my art and experiences into spaces where people like me weren’t really represented, and I wanted to empower folks to really own and take pride in their identity in whatever way felt best for them.
Perfectly Pinay was, and still is, such an impactful passion project that will forever have a special place in my heart, and I’m grateful for the opportunities and connections that have come our way for the past two and a half years. However, for the past six months, I’ve felt called to make a shift towards a more inclusive, community-centered model that allows us to authentically embody our mission and values. There were two questions that have been weighing on my spirit that eventually pushed me to make the leap into our rebrand:
1) Am I being exclusionary at the forefront?
At its core, Perfectly Pinay stands for inclusivity and identity empowerment. However, from an outside perspective, the name “Perfectly Pinay” seems very niched and specific to only embracing Filipinas. I also recognized that a lot of our products leaned more into the feminine-energy, so I felt that as a whole, my business was geared towards women.
2) Who am I really trying to serve?
After sitting with myself and finally addressing the fact that we’ve outgrown the name “Perfectly Pinay”, I took some time to reflect on the people I wanted to reach through our products and spaces. Perfectly Pinay’s mission to elevate Filipino-American experiences will always remain integral to our practices and offerings, but I came to the conclusion that I want to build collectivism and center shared-experiences in addition to this.
This is where Kapwa Kreations came in.
Kapwa is the concept of shared humanity and collectivistic nature. This idea fully encapsulates the shift that I wanted to make as a business, and also as a human in healing.
With this rebrand, I have three goals:
1) To be more openly inclusive with our language, products, and community offerings
2) To cultivate more spaces and opportunities for growth and creativity
3) To center humanness while also addressing systems of harm within the Filipino community
I’m so excited to enact these shifts and to see where this journey takes us!