Resilience is often dressed in gloss. In the Philippines, it’s seen in the smiling faces of people wading through waist-deep floods, in neighbors rebuilding homes after yet another typhoon, heck, it's in the applause for surviving rather than the outrage for why survival is all we’re left with. In business, resilience is celebrated with ribbon cuttings, glowing features, and perfect packaging.
But at Habitude, we’ve learned that resilience, in its truest form, rarely looks glamorous. Sometimes, it looks like disappearing from the shelf, the feed, and the grid.
In 2021, we launched with hope in our pockets and boldness in our hearts. On the surface, it even looked like an overnight success: features across glossies and publications that made it seem like we had arrived. We were even invited by Vogue Singapore to join the Vogue Innovation Awards, making it through the first round. And for a while, it worked. Until it didn’t.
By 2024, we made the unglorious decision to pause—not because the dream had faded, but because it was unfinished. From Vogue Singapore to zero. Off-shelf, off-grid, off-screen, we returned to our labs, our notebooks, our roots.
This wasn’t a defeat. This was accountability. We had made mistakes, and in a country where micro-businesses don’t get second chances easily, mistakes can be fatal. We call ourselves the middle class of businesses: too principled to cut corners, too underfunded to outspend challenges. We are shaped by third-culture values—inclusivity, efficacy, planet-responsibility, social awareness—but without the corporate scaffolding in a fragile economy.