Michael Concepcion, the Man Behind Commonwealth, Is Building a Universe of the Cultish and Cool

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Five years ago, Michael Concepcion and I were at Magnum Café, days before its opening while the entire team was in a mad scramble of meetings, trainings, and testings. He doesn’t remember that interview, but I managed to dig up the article I wrote. “This will only be up for 18 months,” he had said, “and then it will all come down.” I then wrote that “we’ve come to a point in society where we can afford a highly produced pop-up ice cream shop that will melt away next summer.” Today, the idea of temporary stores or revolving concepts occupying a single space is so well-established, they’ve become just another way to shop, but five years ago the phenomenon was novel enough to go all Jia Tolentino over it.

Throwing back to those heady Magnum days where Michael and company threw black-tie balls, appointed all their friends as ambassadors, and brought in Azealia Banks to perform at a strictly-by-invite only Forbes Park house party, one can see how much Michael has accomplished since, yet also how consistent he’s remained. “The direction was to change the perception of an ice cream,” he had said. Sure enough, Magnum, an ice cream bar on a stick—albeit a premium one—became a status symbol, the kind you could purchase at 7-11. You’d think it was dipped in gold from the way it was trending, and at the time, it was brilliantly manufactured hype.

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Shirt by Wacko Maria, pants by Maiden Noir, and shoes by Engineered Garments x Doc Martens 1461, all at Commonwealth

We meet Michael again five years later at the Palacio de Memoria, the magnificently restored pre-war mansion dripping in fine European antiques. I had forgotten how incredibly thoughtful and articulate Michael is, perhaps more so as he enters his late 20s, shaking off the invulnerability that comes with being a boy boss. In photographs, he can appear a tad smug, like someone who knows that behind the movie-star looks lurks a brain that can run circles around you. In person, he is actually the paragon of warm politeness and subtle charm. He is also incredibly tall, which seems to be another function of him standing out, being head and shoulders above the rest.

For those who may not realize who Michael Concepcion is, let me backtrack a little and run down the things he has done. Michael put up his first concept, Ronnie & Joe, in SM Aura in 2011, a premium eyewear boutique that was disruptive in the sense that nobody sold spectacles like a luxury lifestyle product at the time. From the edgy to the cultish to the uniquely Japanese, the brands on display were impeccably curated. The Ed Calma-designed shop interiors were black and shiny and gave off exclusive-nightclub vibes, but the Rockwell branch drew me in with its expanded service, offering comprehensive in-store eye exams. I don’t know what it is about the Concepcion touch of cool, but I walked out of there with a pair of Ditas that was well above my pay grade.

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In 2016, Michael brought in Commonwealth, a streetwear and sneaker boutique from the U.S. owned by Filipino-Americans Omar Quiambao and Larry Incognito. On social media, Commonwealth tantalizes sneakerheads with teasers of Yeezy raffles and Fear of God drops. The store carries a range of obscure Adidas collaborations along with clothing labels like Neighborhood, APC, Human Made, and Nanamica, which again, are a mix of the edgy and the cultish and the uniquely Japanese. With three branches of Ronnie and Joe and two branches of Commonwealth, Michael’s raising an emerging retail empire serving a highly attuned market that is thirsting for, and what’s more, can afford these niche brands.

Early next year, Michael will be unveiling the as-of-yet super-secret Aesop store, adding luxury skincare to his portfolio. Iconic for its amber bottles and clinically designed labels, the Australian brand is also known for appearing in the bathrooms of fancy restaurants and hotels around the world. He's gathered these brands under Welcome Worldwide, a company he formed relatively recently, judging by the zero posts the account has on Instagram. That’s not all, however—Michael’s got his finger in the restaurant pie as well, working with his father, John Concepcion, on the Standard Hospitality Group, which owns Yabu, Ippudo, Mighty Quinn, and Elephant Grounds. Chances are, you’re already their customer.

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“A lot of what we do is synergistic and we see how these things connect, there’s a keen understanding of who we’re trying to sell to, and what narratives we’re trying to tell, whether that’s through food, skincare, sneakers, eyewear,” says Michael. “We see this as part of an ecosystem or universe we’re trying to build.” The mark of any successful entrepreneur is the ability to identify a gap in the market and fill that gap, but also staying on top of the game. “I think I’m just very lucky that I entered into this space when it was still early days,” he says. “I think five years later, if someone wants to put up an eyewear or sneaker concept, it’s been done, and you’d have to approach it from a completely new angle.”

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While the idea for Ronnie & Joe was directly tied to Michael being a prescription glasses wearer since the age of 12, the store is not an extension of his personal wardrobe, but one step in his life-work path, something Michael realizes he must map out with objectivity, and not just do stuff because it’s cool. “These days I’m very conscious of what I put my time into, because anything I say yes to means saying no to something I can potentially be doing elsewhere, so it’s become incredibly important to not just do something because it’s being driven from a kind of narcissistic ego,” he says. Similarly, with Commonwealth, he saw a lot of Filipinos were into the hypebeast/highsnobiety lifestyle but had limited access to the products, and so he stepped in to be the brick-and-mortar purveyor of all things fresh.

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Michael’s entrepreneurial DNA is widely recognized—the Concepcions are a clan of business people four generations strong. Aircons and refrigerators are the core products of Concepcion Industries, which was founded by Jose Concepcion Sr. at the age of 60 (takeaway: it’s never too late to follow your dreams!). The patriarch had four children, the eldest of which are the eponymous Ronnie and Joe, twin brothers who themselves came to be titans of industry and civic leaders—Joe, Michael’s grandfather, helped found NAMFREL, while Ronnie advocated for consumer rights and remains chairman of the Consumer and Oil Price Watch.

Perhaps the naming of Michael’s first baby is more than a nod to his bespectacled grandfather and grand-uncle, but a constant reminder of the legacy that he has been graced and charged to do good with. Michael was born into privilege, no doubt, but it is his own sweat that gives his ideas life and will give it longevity. He could’ve been just another party boy who squanders the family wealth or runs the family company to the ground, or it could have played out like a scenario in Succession where the heir does everything to overthrow his father while the father is only too willing to dump his son upon the sacrificial altar. Instead, the clan appears to be close-knit and supportive of each other’s ventures.

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Suit by William Lee at Commonwealth

Being born a Concepcion probably comes with its own inherent pressures, but the entrepreneurial gene can be switched on at any time. Family members as young as eight are already involved in buying and selling and turning a profit. Responsibility is learned at a young age, so by the time they graduate, they’re primed to take on bigger challenges. As a teen, Michael got his headstart buying and selling sneakers online, and with his cousin Christian Concepcion they created a T-shirt line with a social conscience called Greater Good. Their first pop-up shop at the Mall of Asia gave an inkling as to where Michael’s head was at—modernist store interiors, collaborations with artists, celebrities, and influencers (although they were called fashion bloggers back then), and the overall desire to rethink apparel, graphic design, and branding.

“It was very innate to my upbringing,” Michael says. “I did grow up in a family of entrepreneurs and industrialists, and my dad resonates with that same spirit and mentality. I naturally gravitated toward this space.” While his earlier projects had been backed by the family, Ronnie and Joe was something Michael did on his own. In a conversation he had with his father for Power Mac Center, Michael mentioned that it was his father’s lack of involvement that pushed him to the deep end: “I was a guppy in this big ocean of retail, finding out how can I make a dent in this?” His father observed that now social media can be a great equalizer, if used well. “In the '80s, you needed a lot of money to out your story out there. All we had was traditional media.”

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Hublot Big Bang Unico Ferrari Titanium 45mm watch at Lucerne

The back-and-forth business banter between the pair has gotten to such a point that Michael’s mom and sister just tune them out at the dinner table. “My relationship with my dad—it’s very hard to distinguish now. Where do you draw the line? But it’s fun, we had to figure out how to work with each other. We have very different styles but in a way, almost exactly the same.”

Around the same time, Michael was planning Ronnie and Joe, John Concepcion had just turned 50 and was thinking of a new mission that would be different from his corporate work as CEO of Selecta. He wanted to create a restaurant that the market needed. They took a trip to Japan where, Michael says, “we fell in love with katsu.” At the time, no one in the Philippines was eating katsu, at least not the way they should’ve been. In Japan, cuisine often comes handed down through generations of perfecting one dish, hence the ubiquity of sushi joints, ramen shops, udon houses, gyoza eateries, and yakitori counters. “Why do you have to go through a menu 10 pages deep only to find out that nothing is the best of what they do? Yabu came from the idea of specialization, the discipline of committing to do one thing really, really great,” he says.

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Yabu was a homegrown Japanese concept; the Standard followed with Japan’s Ippudo, Mighty Quinn from New York, and its latest opening was Elephant Grounds, an independent micro-roaster and café from Hong Kong which Michael was heavily involved with, from the signage down to the custom stools. Elephant Grounds’ proprietors are like the Hong Kongese versions of Michael: fashion and design disruptors who live in sneakers and specialty eyewear, who wanted to create a new way of experiencing coffee. What makes Elephant Grounds’ BGC location unique is the localized menu by chefs Nicco Santos and Quenee Villar, whose cooking we’ve missed ever since Hey Handsome closed down (Santos is now the executive chef at the Standard Hospitality Group).

With everything he’s got going on, Michael has found himself in a position where he needs to level up, both in an operational and personal sense. He started with a team of five, and only recently grew to 10 times the number. “For a long time, I was doing a bit of everything, and right now it’s transitioning. We’re not anymore a small company—how do we make this an organization where people want to work? We’re in that phase now which is very exciting,” he says. “I’ve always been a young boss, a lot of my style is just learning on the fly and being put in situations where I have to figure things out along the way.”

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Top by Louis Vuitton, Solaire Resorts and Casino, sunglasses by Visvim at Commonwealth, and Hublot Classic Fusion Black Magic 45mm watch at Lucerne

On a personal side, Michael has been trying to balance the demands of a high-pressure, no-weekend career with his spiritual well-being. To this end, he’s weaned himself off social media, for the most part, and immerses himself in motivational books written by people who’ve been there before. “I’ve been making conscious efforts to be present, be more mindful and content with where I am, but it’s such a conflicting idea with being an entrepreneur,” he says. “You have to constantly think about where you’re going to be in the next three, five, 10 years. I think about the future all the time, to a fault.”

So on his 28th birthday, Michael climbed a mountain. It was a different kind of challenge that needed conquering, one that tests your physical endurance and will to push on. Of course, he brought a large crew of friends and fellow culture shapers with him up Mt. Pulag, all kitted out in Nike ACG (available exclusively at Commonwealth), but there will never be a selfie nor groupfie that truly captures what you feel the moment you summit, just as the first rays of light filter through the long darkness.

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On his birthday post, Michael wrote, “The past few months have been a personal challenge, with times I didn’t see how I’d dig myself out but I’m grateful to the people in my life who’ve helped put things back into perspective for me. Learning to embrace the chaos and find happiness in appreciating the uncertainty. Sometimes the only way out is through.” And sometimes, the only way to move forward is to slow down.

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In this story: Produced by Clifford Olanday • Photographs by Artu Nepomuceno • Styling by Meg Manzano and Bryan Sochayseng.• Interview by Audrey N. Carpio • Grooming by Joan Teotico • Hair by Francis Guintu for Aveda Philippines • Production assistants Paolo Chua and Roland Mae Tanglao • With thanks to Lex Celera • Shot on location at Palacio de Memoria