MANILA, Philippines - Would a YStyle girl or boy backpack? These days, it’s not unlikely. On Instagram, I see friends — the furthest from the backpacking types — trudging up mountains or ditching comfy hotels for a taste of hostel living. You have an Airbnb app? That’s like a badge of honor. While I still prefer booking a hotel (because, I guess, I am tita that way), backpacking is not something I am opposed to trying, and by backpacking, I mean really carrying just one backpack to several different countries for one long vacation.
Recently, I met the founder of Argentinian shoe brand Paez, Tomas Pando, who claims to have been backpacking on and off for the past 10 years. “People whom I have just met tell me that I look ‘very Paez,’” he says. My thoughts were the same. While he looks more like a backpacker who just happened to make a stop in Manila to maybe go surfing or something, Tomas is the CEO of Paez, a company that sells in more than 45 countries. He got his business administration degree in his home country Argentina, and took executive business programs at Stanford and Harvard University.
“I’m more of a marketing guy. What I like about consumer goods is, at the end of the day, it’s very simple. You have a product, you build a brand and you have a price. If the consumers like it, they buy. If they don’t, they don’t. So it’s easy to know if you’re having success or not. The whole process for me is very intriguing and interesting. Communicating the product is what I love. I’m not a businessman, I’m an entrepreneur. I like creating things,” Tomas says.
He was born in a farming city on the north of Argentina. “It was hot most of the year, and all my childhood, I wore alpargatas. This (traditional shoe) product has more than 100 years of history in Argentina, but in the last 50 years it has become a real commodity for farmers.”
Paez started out as a university project. “We had a project that required us to pick an Argentinian product to sell worldwide. We chose to reinvent the classic alpargata. Traditional alpargatas were just canvas shoes, very cheap, so people would buy a pair once a month. For the last 50 years, it was just white, blue and black,” he says.
He founded the brand in 2006 with three friends, Tomas Pando, Francisco Murray and Francisco Piasentini. Now he travels a lot for work, but keeps his itinerary open for little vacations. “When you are building something, it’s very stressful. Most of the day, you receive bad news. ‘This is not working, this store is not performing well…’ All problems. So we need two or three weeks to disconnect the phone and go somewhere not toxic,” he says. Don’t we all agree? And though he can probably afford to check in wherever he wants, Tomas still prefers backpacking over so-called jetsetting.
“My first time in Asia, I was backpacking. It’s the best way to discover a country. Get to the old city, find a hostel, eat on the street.” He shares his favorite travel experiences: “Two years ago, just by coincidence, I went to the Maldives. Amazing place! Now I’m into diving. I now live in Barcelona, but there’s still so many corners and old towns in Europe to discover. I also find China very interesting. It’s not a very touristic place, but how the culture is changing so fast is very interesting. My next big trip is to Nepal. Philippines now is also hip. All my European friends are going to the Philippines. Thailand, Vietnam, Bali… everyone’s already been there. So the Philippines is next.”
Paez calls itself a brand for “dream-jumpers.” “If you can ride a bike, you’re a Paez customer. If you are six years old or 60 years old and you can ride a bike, which represents a way of living, then you are a Paez customer,” Tomas shares.
“There are three concepts that we’d like to be permanent. First is the idea of the bike — we want to make products that you can use to ride a bike. Second, we want to build products that are simple, twisted and fun. We’re never gonna be a technical performance shoe. Third is the ‘we trip’ concept — products that you can take with you when you travel, they inspire you to be a backpacker or be adventurous.”
Paez is a brand he wears himself, having grown up wearing traditional alpargatas back home. It’s one of the things he always packs in his knapsack. “We’re now having this ‘tripping’ culture. We have a new product that’s not here yet, but it has a hanger for the bags and every product has a map, with recommendations from Paez,” he says.
Packing tips? “I started to be a backpacker 10 years ago, you didn’t need a tablet. Now it’s so important to have a tablet or a phone. Also, bring a lot of small bags. When I travel, my bag is full of bags.”
* * *
Paez is available at R2 Level Archaeology Wing, Power Plant Mall; Level 1, UP Town Center and Rustan’s Department Stores. Follow Paez Philippines on Facebook and @paezph on Instagram for information.