CITEM launches project to boost lifestyle export industry

MANILA, Philippines - “With lifestyle exports being economy sensitive to a large extent, world market preference is shifting from the developed to the developing countries for supply, and making them compete, not just in price, but in various quality standards mostly related directly to design.”

Thus said executive director Rosvi C. Gaetos of the Center for International Trade Expositions and Missions (CITEM) in explaining why the agency, as an export promotions arm of the Department of Trade and Industry, had to go deep into the development of the country’s design talents through a special program named Red Box.

“We just cannot ignore the trillion-dollar market out there and let our lifestyle export industry go into an irreversible decline simply for lack of world-class designers.  Our industry has the raw materials, the manpower pool, the socio-cultural and historical base, and the capital for lifestyle export enterprise, but all these resources will go in vain without the type of professionals who can design the lifestyle products that can ably compete in the world market,” Gaetos said of the purpose of CITEM’s pioneering Red Box program.

Red Box aims to nurture Filipino designers by partnering them with export manufacturers and providing them with international exposure in highly-competitive foreign marketing events.