Rissa Mananquil-Trillo leaves Happy Skin: 'It’s time we all made better choices'
Model-entrepreneur Rissa Mananquil-Trillo has announced her departure from local beauty brand Happy Skin, a move she described as a "difficult decision" that she "thought long and hard about."
Recalling how she started the brand exactly eight years ago, Trillo shared a video of herself removing a necklace—a gold Happy Skin pendant that she has worn almost every day—along with a statement announcing that she will be leaving the brand.
"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," she wrote on Monday, Oct. 18.
"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," Trillo continued.
The book author also shared that she sought advice from a few esteemed individuals in the industry, and only realized one thing: "no matter what generation you are from, right is right and wrong is wrong."
Trillo also shared that she created Happy Skin with the goal of keeping Filipinas and their beauty issues in mind.
"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 continued.
Without expounding, the entrepreneur, who has won an Ernst & Young’s Woman Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2017, mentioned that the brand's values no longer align with hers.
"It’s time we all made better choices. Success to me is being able to check all the boxes in that list, but also knowing when to walk away," she added.
She then thanked her supporters for "always making me feel like I can do anything."
"I just finished one beautiful chapter. Now I’m excited to write a new one. From happy skin—to now happy heart and happy mind," Trillo said.
Trillo co-founded Happy Skin in 2013 with Jacqe Yuengtian-Gutierrez. Gutierrez also co-owns BLK Cosmetics with Anne Curtis.
In eight years, Happy Skin has set up 14 stores and 80 beauty counters across the country, and won numerous awards from fashion and beauty magazines and malls.