Happy Skin founder leaves company

HAPPY Skin co-founder and Chief Brand Officer Rissa Mananquil Trillo announced through an Instagram post on Oct. 19 that she was leaving the brand.

This as Happy Skin co-founder and CEO Jacqe Yuengtian Gutierrez said that Ms. Mananquil Trillo had stopped working for the company in March 2020.

“Today is also the day I’m announcing my exit from Happy Skin. This is a decision I thought long and hard about. It takes a lot of strength to leave something I poured so much of my life into,” Ms. Mananquil Trillo said in a post accompanied by a video where she takes off a gold pendant engraved with the brand’s name and places it into a box. “I later had this gold Happy Skin pendant made and even gifted replicas to my partners. From then on, I’ve worn it almost every day close to my heart as a reminder of all the hard work, purpose, and passion,” she said in the post.

Ms. Mananquil Trillo had been a model and a beauty columnist for 15 years before co-founding the company.

An official statement announcing Ms. Mananquil Trillo’s departure noted, “Since its creation, and with Rissa’s leadership as Chief Brand Officer, Happy Skin has won over 40 beauty awards… Rissa’s work with Happy Skin paved the way for her to win awards as Ernst & Young’s Woman Entrepreneur of the Year in 2017 and GoNegosyo’s Inspiring Filipina Entrepreneur in 2018. In 2019, Rissa wrote her first book, Read My Lips: What It Takes to Build a World-Class Homegrown Brand, published by Summit Books. It was the publishing house’s first business book written by a female author.”

NO DETAILS GIVEN
Ms. Trillo did not give details on her reasons for leaving the company. In both the statement and her Instagram post, she said, “Shared values are so important. Doing a good job has always meant so much to me — not just a good job, but doing it with integrity. It never made sense to me to compromise what I believed in because that meant compromising my respect for myself, too.

“It was honestly a difficult decision. The final step I took was to seek the advice of some of the country’s respected business leaders. Turning to them proved to me that no matter what generation you are from, right is right and wrong is wrong,” she said.

“When I look back at my goals when Happy Skin started, I’ve ticked off everything on my list — to provide a solution to a problem Filipinas had been facing and empower them with skin-caring makeup, to fill the gap in the cosmetics industry with a local makeup brand that offered premium quality products at affordable prices, and to create a homegrown brand that Filipinos can be proud of,” she said.

In an e-mail to BusinessWorld, Ms. Mananquil Trillo said, “I received so many messages telling me ‘It’s an end of an era,’ but I’m excited for what’s next. I will continue to use my platform for things that matter to me — women empowerment, gender equality, sustainability, and helping start-ups and aspiring entrepreneurs. More than that, I feel the same fire in me again. The same fire when I started Happy Skin dreaming about a game-changing brand. And it feels good. There are far more opportunities than I imagined.”

Meanwhile, Ms. Yuengtian Gutierrez said in an e-mail to BusinessWorld, “Though Rissa has not been working with Happy Skin since March of 2020, we will always be grateful for her contributions to the brand. We wish her well on the journey ahead of her.” Asked for clarification, she said, “It means that she really hasn’t been working with the Happy Skin team since March of 2020. She only announced [her departure] this week but she hasn’t been working with the team since March of 2020.”

In a Facebook message to BusinessWorld, Ms. Mananquil Trillo said, “I continued to fulfill all of my obligations to Happy Skin until the day I resigned and made the decision to divest all of my interests in the company.”

FOUNDING HAPPY SKIN
The brand is known for combining skincare and makeup, and places great importance on being a homegrown brand. It was first sold in Rustan’s and Beauty Bar, moving on to SM and Watsons, and was eventually found in almost all of the beauty counters of several stores nationwide.

It also trailblazed collaborations with global brands like Disney, Sanrio, and Havaianas, as well as Filipina personalities Kris Aquino, Liz Uy, KC Concepcion, Heart Evangelista, and Kathryn Bernardo.

According to the company website, “In a span of three and a half years, Happy Skin has set up 14 stores and 80 beauty counters across the country, won 30 beauty awards from top fashion and beauty glossies, was awarded by online news giant Rappler as a brand leader in social media, was hailed by Ayala Malls as the Most Promising Retailer for 2015, and garnered Watsons Philippines’ award as the Most Promising New Cosmetic Brand for 2015.”

Ms. Mananquil Trillo and Ms. Yuengtian Gutierrez had worked together since Ms. Mananquil Trillo came on board as a consultant for Unilever brand Pond’s, which Ms. Yuengtian Gutierrez was handling at the time.

“To give Happy Skin its wings, Jacqe partnered with one of the country’s top models, beauty columnist for national newspaper The Philippine Star, and former president of the Professional Models Association of the Philippines (PMAP), Rissa Mananquil-Trillo. With Rissa’s 15 years of experience under her belt, this isn’t the first time Jacqe and Rissa worked together,” the company website explains.

Ms. Yuengtian Gutierrez is also the CEO and co-founder of BLK cosmetics, which she co-founded in 2017 with celebrity Anne Curtis.

Ms. Yuengtian Gutierrez said, “Happy Skin will of course continue to fulfill its mission of elevating Filipino beauty and offering world-class products.” — Joseph L. Garcia with ZBC