The Broken hair band
This all started with some broken hairbands. To be precise almost one broken hairband a day. Sarah was very fond of hairbands at the age of three. We called her “Tod Phod“. Whenever we buy a hairband for her, it broke in minutes. With all her cuteness, she broke a hairband and tell her mom “mom it also broke” (awww How cute!).
That was not intentional, most of the plastic hairbands available in local market are so fragile that kids broke them every day. At that time, I never imagined to enter into the hair accessories market.
When I left my regular job as Professor in a university (Of course private university, who left the job from sarkari university), to start something of my own, I had not decided what to do. The only thing that was known to me is that to start something of my own.
Previously, I tried many business starting from selling computers to building websites, though I never termed them as failed venture, but somehow I was not at all satisfied with service business.
So, I decided to start selling something online. The main problem was product. I was continuously in search of products. My first thinking was to sell stationary products online and not to keep physical inventory. The year was 2015, then i discussed with one of my friend and we zeroed on Fashion jewelry.
Jewelry, being a very competitive product was not easy to sell online. To be start with, I bought some hair accessories, hair clips, hair bands etc. My thinking was that if these does not sell, we will consume it ourselves (of course my three daughters)
Now, the product was there, I made a quick website on opencart and started my own site. At that time, I dont have money to market my own site. Someone suggest me to sell on marketplaces and we started selling on Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal.
The journey till date was wonderful, we sold almost One Lakh items on Amazon and Flipkart alone.
The marketplaces have their own advantages and disadvantages. One thing they lack is artistic freedom. They have their guidelines, which they strictly follow etc. After all, they have to manage millions of sellers and items on their platform.
Now we are restarting this website again to start selling on it. Though we are doing good on the marketplaces, but due to limitations (we will discuss about limitations later), we are again starting this website.
Mazhar and Fouzia
Anokhi Ada