Charade's Soap Opera

It isn’t difficult figuring out this Charade, even at first meeting (arranged by STAR columnist Mayenne Carmona). Unlike the game whose name is hers as well (the dictionary defines charade as a pantomime in which players try to figure out words acted out by other players), Charade Galang is no puzzle.

She’s a chemist by profession who started out as a lab rat. She then tried her luck in fashion merchandising as a manager for the Spanish clothing brand Zara. A retail fashion store manager by day, she retreated to her lab by night.

She was cooking up something — her daily skin care. Most of her money, she recalls, went to her clothing expenses. Explains Charade: “All of a sudden, I had to change the clothes that I was wearing. I became more sophisticated because everybody looked at me as a fashion icon. I had to wear nice accessories. I had to have a Gucci bag, a Chanel bag. My makeup had to follow the Fall-Winter collection theme, Spring-Summer theme, so everything should be updated. I had to have a sideline. When I got into making soap, I saw how fast the movement was as long as you were able to explain how the product worked. My first clients included my mom, my relatives. And then eventually, my neighbors. I used to stay in a condo so I would post in the bulletin board that I was selling soap.” Her bestseller was papaya whitening soap.

During her leaves, she would go to the provinces. She would surf the Net and look for outlets. “And it so happened that there were really people who were searching for products. Though I had my failures, they didn’t stop me from going to Bukidnon or Surigao to sell my soaps.”

The fashion retail manager was making waves with soap bubbles.

Charade would make the formulations inside her house and bought a cold press stove to help her in the process. She rented the stove until she was finally able to buy one for P80,000. In three months, she recovered her investment. Not long after, she was able to rent space outside her condo where she could continue her “soap opera.”

“After I got my ROI (return on investment), I started to outsource the manufacturing. I discovered that this could make things easier for me. So I would just do the formulation, I would just do the mixing and outsource the manufacturing.”

Soon, Charade resigned from her job and concentrated on her “soap opera.” She first named her soap products, “Glorious Skin.”

** *

In high school at St. Paul’s College in Quezon City, she was the school’s representative to all the science tilts of the Department of Science and Technology.

“I looked forward to joining every DOST contest and the sisters of St. Paul, they were very supportive of me. And during my third year, I was exempted for the whole year in Chemistry. So it’s like I didn’t take Chemistry at all.”

Charade, who looks like a model now, claims she was actually a nerd in high school, the type who would be in school before 7 a.m. every day to make sure the flag was ready for the flag-raising ceremony. She was always in the student council and graduated salutatorian of her batch.

Why was Charade so interested in Chemistry?

“When non-chemists see things, the substances look so simple. But if you try to play around with these substances, twist them, they create something more than you expect. So for me, Chemistry is a never-ending journey, it shows continuity. It makes you aware that there is always something beautiful that you can make out of the ordinary. So that’s the way I feel about Chemistry up to now.”

“Being a Chemistry addict makes you realize how everything is placed in its proper perspective.”

Because she understood what went into the homemade formulations she used on her skin (still flawless at age 32), she never took shortcuts in the formulation of her products.

“For example, I’m so much into skin care; if I were selfish, I could always create something for my clients that would immediately give instant results, whitening, eraser, whatever. But if I were a selfish person, I could assure you would get what you want without informing you that in a few years, you’re gonna see a big pigment on your face that’s irreversible. So I think in Chemistry and life, it’s making sure that there is continuity. Continuity not only in research but in maintaining what is good, improving it but not actually changing it.”

Her Glorious Skin soap, “was doing wonders, it was really erasing the pimples, the scars, everything. And the harmful effects that other people feel when they buy other papaya soaps, they don’t feel them in my soap.”

She was always confident of her products for the simple reason that she was her own guinea pig. So when people would see her flawless skin, “they would start trying it, they would start asking, and then eventually they become my loyal clients. The good thing about skin care is that if you are able to satisfy one person, the whole family will buy from you.”  

“First, I started with relatives; and then my staff from Zara; and then third, call centers; fourth, the referral of the call centers. And then eventually, these call center operators, they have clients from Forbes and Dasma, I started selling to them, too. And then my clients from Forbes and Dasma started referring me to their friends, too.”

Charade had a big problem in her hands — her supplies couldn’t keep up with the demand. “I was running out of stock. Then my mom said, ‘well, that’s a good problem’.”

Finally, the lab nerd who started her business from her own home approached Watson’s. “I was one of those suppliers falling in line just to make sure that I reached the deadline and be able to present what I have. I never thought I would be here, wherever I am right now. If people tell me I’m successful, I’m not yet because I’m just starting. So when I started presenting my products, the person who I was presenting to would tell me, ‘These are good products.’ I just said, ‘Thank you, thank you’.”

To her surprise, the client told her, “Why don’t we do this as a Watson brand exclusive?”

Charade took a deep breath and asked, “So what’s a Watson brand exclusive?”

She was told the store was going to use her name in the brand products.

 “We’re gonna use your name.” It was a dream come true because all she wanted was for Watson’s to buy her products.

Charade says she feels she impressed the client because “anything they asked about the product, I could just answer. Anything that pops out of their head, they can just throw the question and I could answer.”

Charade labeled her products, all 46 of them, One Naturales; it’s O for organic, N for natural, E for eco-friendly.

Initially, Charade plans to market 26 out of the 46 products first. And Charade no longer works from the house, she has an office at the Fort Bonifacio Technology center. But her lab, as in the past, is still in her house.

“Because for me, my lab has to be beside me. I have to live with it. So it makes me incomplete if my lab is far.”

And Charade’s soap opera now has many “characters,” so to speak, like lip balm, shampoo, body butter, lotion.

It’s a long-running soap opera for Charade, and it’s not hard to figure out why!

(You may e-mail me at [email protected])