Kira Plastinina: A fashionable business

BUSINESS BITS
Jimbo Owen B. Gulle

One glimpse at a Kira Plastinina store in Beverly Hills ended Kerry Zamora’s three-year wait to put up her own business—and it gave her, by her own admission, her first serious job.

Zamora, 29, was a part-time stylist, image consultant, and personal shopper before obtaining the first franchise in Southeast Asia of Kira Plastinina, the Russian fashion brand that was named after its teenaged stylist-founder.

After graduating from Assumption College, Zamora took up fashion studies at Parsons School of Design and image consulting at the Fashion Institute of Technology, both in New York.

Doing the Philippine launch of a unique fashion brand such as Kira thus came naturally for Zamora, who comes from the prominent Neri clan and is married to San Juan City Councilor Francis Zamora.

She explains: “I had wanted to either put up my own fashion brand or franchise something different, and it took me three years to find this idea.”

She says she chose the Kira brand in part because “you can’t find a lot of international retail brands [in the Philippines] for teenage girls and women in their 20s,” and she adds that Kira clothes and shoe accessories are versatile enough that even mothers wear them.

Zamora has her sister, Ruby Neri-Coching, as her partner in the business and the two are getting a lot of help in growing the brand from their mother, Ruby Neri, and from friends.

According to her, with the surprising knowledge of Filipino girls about the brand and the good foot traffic at SM Megamall, sales “were better than expected” during her first month of operation.