Six years ago, someone suggested me to supply wedding dresses to the UK or Pakistani claims clients. She who suggested was from London and told me, that “you will gain a good margin from this business.”
I was already interested in the handcrafted making market, especially for weddings which are called bespoke tailored dresses. They are mostly handmade. These custom-made dresses are prepared by passionate skilled Pakistani workers who intricately handcraft the whole stuff. One dress mostly takes from four to six weeks and sometimes 10 weeks depending upon the workload and design theme. 4 to 6 workers work at a single bridal dress for about 8 weeks and 10 hours per day. Then a beautiful masterpiece is created for a bride to make her dream dress be true for her big day.
I asked my friend if she knows someone there in the UK who is a taxpayer and owns this kind of business or boutique so that I can collaborate with such a person on her customer demand. My friend referred me to her friend who owned a boutique in Luton.
Two deals took place between her and me.
Experiment #1
✓ Deal one, will I mark as beneficial
She Ordered me some Mehndi and Barat dresses for ladies and kids. All workers worked according to their clients at my instructions. According to pictures sent by her, the dresses were accurately customized by the laborer. From my side, she got delivered on time, and the dresses she found were better than her expectations. All were sold instantly. She paid me some advance payment and some after-delivery reception.
I got a small benefit and much more experience I would say, I got more virtual benefits than financial ones. As money should always be the outcome and not a goal, especially a greedy goal.
✓✓✓ All was ticked right and perfect.
Experiement #2
The second deal was I would say 50% – 50%
As she told many lies to pay for the deal 2. In this deal, I got an experience in customer dealing. How to ask a customer for remaining payments and how much to trust someone in the business. Financially second deal was like a small benefit again to me but more headache than a fashion passion.
I decided never to deal with her.I judge her habit of miscommitments and lies. Want to know what happened after this? How clever was she? And what she did do?
She took all the data from where I sent her the dresses, ordered him directly, and scammed him. After a big scam, of 200 £ or more than this, she blocked him from all numbers and social media. The worker begged me and anyhow, I agreed to help him in retrieving some of his amounts. I and my friend retrieved some of his mounts in just two months from her after two years.
Again experience in customer and sales dealing. I got confidence and my judgment to never deal with her, which proved to be right.
This experience taught me a lot about customer dealing. Now my passion was paused but not stopped yet. I think to offer my service to people who I would directly know myself.
So, my friend ordered her family’s dresses for her wedding. The whole project was an awesome experience, excellent by passion, satisfaction, and as a career start as well. Again a small benefit and financial margin which should be the ultimate outcome at the end of every business.
My first priority was not a lot of greedy money, but small money just as the satisfaction of my passion. As my fellow writer, Shadow said on medium in a post that money should always be an outcome and not the goal. I totally agree with Andrei Boghiu Shadow. I was walking according to my rule, that my passion is first, little money for satisfaction, and motivation at second priority.
Experiment #3
Again I tried to make some money from seasonal stuff. I invested $100 in unstitched clothes and winter stuff. I informed all surrounding in my neighborhood to sell them.
Want to know what happened? It was hectic, ladies come, open and reopen the stuff and go away.
Result:
All were sold, except two articles which were my profit actually.
20,000 PKR equals 20,000 PKR
Two articles = total profit = Bound investment
I hardly retrieved my invested amount to circulate eight for any other project and donated those two articles to poor ladies. Another experience I got and decided not to invest again like this.
Experiment #4
I was still interested in bespoke tailoring. After hours and hours of watching and picking good and latest fashion ideas from the Internet, my phone gallery was full of stuff like this. I was scrolled by a seller who was in the wholesale business of some ready-made stuff for weddings. Now, this variety was for the lower middle-class category. Readymade variety for very very low-income people.
I got the idea to save his pictures from his WhatsApp status. I took screenshots of each and every dress from his WhatsApp status and edited the pictures without prices.
In the meanwhile, a lady from that class come to me, for some other assistance. The lady told me that the whole market, is inflated a lot and I want to hold the marriage ceremony of my daughter. Clothes are expensive in the whole market and out of her budget. All of the stuff was out of her budget at retail shops of garments.
I already knew that this class in Pakistan never knows how to order online, that’s why they are facing the retail prices from all of the retail shops. They don’t know about the wholesale market for the same variety. Obviously, things, at the wholesale market will be at better prices than retail ones.
- Want to do what I did?
- How I made my opportunity?
I thought to take benefit of my customer dealing skills. I offered her my skill of online shopping. She accepted the offer. I suggested that I will help her in selecting the wedding stuff at wholesale rates. I sent her all the edited screenshots of the dresses. The price range she decided on as her budget was shared with me. I edited the pictures and mentioned the prices of each and every dress, with the same amount she shared with me.
That range still has a small margin for me, especially since I like the cash form, and she was offering the cash form, in advance. The whole process took several days. Their whole family selected a party and paid me in advance. They asked me to order them online.
Money belong to them, the idea was mine, the skill of shopping was mine, and the whole idea helped both of us. The whole family shopped for me for this event.
✓✓✓✓✓ I will rate this experiment as an A1 experience, less time-consuming, good cash margin in my hand in advance, without any of my physical inventory investment.
A+ experience. Now I hunted another ceremony in my circle of that class. And offered them by sending WhatsApp pictures and digital stuff within their budget, hoping for another same experience like the previous one with the advance cash in hand. Zero investment and one hour of sending digital stuff like some of my editing skills of editing prices will gain some profit again.
But my passion for bespoke tailoring remained the same and pushed me to invest some money in the digital era. I concluded that this is a digital era people like to invest in this way.
I am developing my website as people like to order online, they enjoyed online market prices. My website link is bespoktailor.com. But this site is under construction. For custom-made dresses specialized in sending stuff to UK clients for Pakistani weddings. Ladies interested in ordering their dream dresses are welcome to my website.
Ladies interested in ordering online can follow my Facebook page “pakistanielegantwear“, as well as at Instagram account namely “pakistanielegantwear4” all process of how to order is given in the blog link below, From dress estimation to submitting their dress pictures to photo confirmation.
Final Words
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