BAGUIO CITY -- Levi Nayahangan, a member of the First Philippine Mount Everest Expedition (FPMEE), may not have been chosen to reach the summit of Mt. Everest this year, but he saw a good opportunity to have his line of mountaineering apparel reach the top of the world.
One may see much bigger brands of mountaineering apparel (REI, North Face, Levi's, Timberland, Gap, Columbia, Patagonia, Nike and Adidas, among others) sponsoring climbers but there is also a chance that a Sherpa or a porter in a climb in the Himalayas may jut be wearing a “Lagalag.”
This "kanto" [street corner] word, which means "wandering" or "wanderer," was made famous by the 1994 film, "Lagalag: The Eddie Fernandez Story," starring Rudy Fernandez as the matinee idol turned jailbird.
But it was the name that stuck to Nayahangan's mind when he resigned from his high-paying job in a Korean trading company to start his own business.
"'Lagalag' refers to the members of my generation who may be highly educated but have wanderlust and great hunger for adventure," says the 33-year-old Business Administration graduate from the University of the Philippines (UP).
Nayahangan may have officially climbed his first mountain when he was in high school in Ifugao province, but as he says, "When you are born and raised in the Cordillera, you are climbing mountains all your life."
He joined the UP Mountaineers and is one of five UP Mountaineers members in the Mt. Everest expedition. He is also one of two from the Cordillera region. Val Ramos, of Bauko town in Mountain Province, was injured in a taekwondo match and had to beg off from the Mt. Everest climb.
With "Lagalag," Nayahangan started his backyard industry in Rizal, designing and making pants, shorts, shirts and accessory bags using the same technology that the much bigger brands employ but at a much lower price.
His pants, for example, sell for about P800-P1,200, about one-fourth the price of more popular mountaineering apparel. His short pants sell for P650-P750 apiece.
The "official": uniform of the FPMEE members is "Lagalag." Leo Oracion and Erwin "Pastor" Emata wore "Lagalag" on their way to Mt. Everest's summit and so did the other members who stayed at Base Camp in Nepal.
Nayahangan provided the 16 members who went to Nepal with their apparel for free.