About

Born and bred in the Philippines, Ira moved to Toronto in 2020 to fulfill her dreams.

 

After completing her Bachelor’s degree in Economics from University of the Philippines, the country’s national and top-ranking university, Ira took over as the Brand Specialist for Topshop reporting to UK principal, Arcadia. In this experience, she developed her brand management and retail skills, and fashion trend intuition.

 

In her early 20’s, Ira created Martini, an online painting business which enabled her to curate collections and accept made-to-order painted bags. In pursuit of not only profit but ultimately passion, she held painting sessions for independent creative markets in Manila. In addition, she was featured in various ABS-CBN (Philippines’ leading media company) streams such as ANC’s On The Money and ABS-CBN Lifestyle News.

 

At the same time, she handled the Girls’ Wear category of the Philippines’ largest retail conglomerate, The SM Store. As a Category Merchandise Manager, she acted as a product developer in liaison with 20 local and international suppliers; merchandiser in track of inventory management; and allocator in fulfillment of stock levels across 62 The SM Store branches nationwide and its growing e-store channel. In this role, she was able to travel around the Philippines to conduct store visits and work closely with the visual merchandising team to prepare for store openings.

 

CREATIVE YET ANALYTICAL. After staying with The SM Store for 5 years, she decided to transition into retail technology by taking a postgraduate certificate in Business Analytics at George Brown College in Toronto, Canada. Aside from being a full-time student who is consistently a part of the Dean’s Honour List, she kept herself grounded and hungry for new experiences as a sales associate in Kate Spade and as a receptionist and screener at a long-term care in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic.

 

Today she is in pursuit of game-changing business revolutions and novel ideas – all combined with her love for fashion and technology.