Based in San Francisco’s Union Square, Cuyana wants to change how people buy and spend money.
Cuyana is a nationwide brand for clothing and accessories. It’s CEO, Karla Gallardo, is on a mission to educate people about her home country’s specialized craft of hand weaving straw hats and give the popular product back its rightful name.
Gallardo grew up in Ecuador.
"My parents were very, very focused and invested in my sister and my education," she said.
She said her father prepared them that one day they will go the U.S. for college. In fact, when applying for colleges, her father had all the top universities mail him brochures. The expectations, even her high school college counselor thought, were too high.
“Our college counselor looked at the target list that my dad thought we should be applying to and she said, 'Oh, no. That's reaching too high.' We ended up applying to the top schools in the U.S. We made a list of 10. It turns out that I got into nine out of 10," Gallardo said.
Gallardo came to the United States at the age of 18 to attend Brown University. She would earn a bachelor of science degree in applied mathematics and got a job at Goldman Sachs.
But after nearly two years, she left that job to get a master's at Stanford’s graduate school of business. She had big dreams of creating her own brand. In 2011, Cuyana was born and Gallardo wanted the company’s first product to be hand-woven straw hats.
“Ecuador has the beautiful heritage, which is the craft of making straw hats, of hand weaving those straw hats," she said
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But there was a problem. The hats were being sold in the U.S. under the name of Panama hat. Gallardo had a tough decision to make.
“The most painful decision I had to make at the beginning of Cuyana was to actually name those Panama hats, not because I was in agreement with that name but rather because I was starting an online business and people are searching for Panama hats," she said.
The Panama hat is actually made in Ecuador. Cuyana is now promoting and selling it as the Ecuador hat.
Gallardo is hoping to bring more awareness to this craft from her country and that other retailers will soon follow suit.
Her journey, as an entrepreneur and businesswoman, has come full circle with this new mission. And she credits her father for it all.
“When he sees me, for example, in interviews like this one, he's just so proud," she said. "I always tell him it's thanks to you, and he can't accept that. I hope that one day he realizes it's all thanks to him.”
