Hiraya Pilipina has already come a long way under the leadership of Cleo Loque in revolutionizing the local “boob solutions” industry but some things still remained the same
This is an excerpt from the MEGA February 2025 Features
What were we doing when we were 15 years old? When Cleo Loque was 15 years old, she founded her company Hiraya Pilipina and sold shirts and totes printed with women-empowerment statements. Far be it from us to compare ourselves to her, but let us instead look at her as one of the finer examples of Gen Z’s best characteristics: independent, entrepreneurial, competitive, technology-savvy, with a dash of idealism.
“I definitely dreamt of becoming a business owner, but when I started Hiraya Pilipina, it was more of a passion project.” Cleo shares with MEGA that she did not even plan on growing the brand as big as it has become.
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Though the Hiraya Pilipina from when Cleo started it in high school is vastly different from the Hiraya Pilipina today, the more important aspect of the brand remains the same. She is now 21 years old, a college student, and leads a sizable team of people who are now working in her company. They now offer a different product under the brand, but “the core of the brand from the very start is about female empowerment,” she says. “So even if there were different products that we started on, it’s all aligned.”
Steadily, from a one-woman team, Hiraya Pilipina grew to now having a group of kindred people working together, majority of them are female. At the MEGA shoot, Cleo came with three women to represent Hiraya Pilipina’s empowered team—Human Resources Head Myka Sosa, Chief Sale & Marketing Head Asia Sofia Mabalot, and Operations and Fulfillment Associate Kacy Abella. Hiraya Pilipina’s breakthrough year came in 2022 when they launched their first line of nipple pasties and they saw an exponential growth in their sales.“That was when I made the intentional decision to remove all the other product lines to focus on the pasties and started to build the brand on this line,” Cleo says. No more shirts, no more totes. “It was a permanent risk at the time because the tote bags were selling really well.”
Read more of Hiraya Pilipina’s girl bosses in MEGA’s February 2025 issue, now available on Readly, Magzter, Press Reader and Zinio.
Photographed by KIERAN PUNAY. Written by STEF JUAN. Production JONES PALTENG. Art Direction TROY NONATO. Styling ERICA TEROL. Makeup CLAIRE SEELIN-DIOKNO (Cleo Loque and Myka Sosa) and VHIO VILLARICA (Asia Sofia Mabalot, and Kacy Abella). Hair RICKY DIOKNO (Cleo Loque), TJ RIMOCAL (Myka Sosa and Kacy Abella), and DHEL MORALES (Asia Sofia Mabalot).
