Carving her niche: the women taking on the world of furniture

Decorating or refurbishing home is usually a woman’s prerogative. Mostly, women decide what furniture they want and the husband/son/father/brother procures it. Some might venture out themselves in search of what they want, since they know exactly how they want their arm chair or coffee table to look like, weigh and cost, and they could be talking to a carpenter as comfortably as their tailor or cook.

A new breed

However, a new breed of women is not frequenting furniture stores to buy a piece of furniture. Not quite inspired by what is available out there, they have decided to use their artistic skills and knowledge of design and architecture to design furniture. And why mess with wood, nails and saws, when they can use the craftsman’s skill to the hilt to produce beautiful and functional furniture. Maria Shah and Zahra Ebrahim have found flourishing careers in doing so.

From renovating her own house to others’

While others were baking cakes or experimenting with Dalgona coffee during the pandemic, 32-year-old Maria Shah decided to renovate her drawing room. Masked up and armed with her bottle of sanitiser, she got busy getting hold of carpenters. Gradually, she managed to meet some carpenters, vendors, and workers to give her drawing room a new look. “As soon as I got done with redecorating the room, my family and friends encouraged me to do more of this since they thought I was pretty good at it,” says Shah sitting on a teal sofa in her drawing room. “Since I had built a network of craftsmen, I thought I could actually design a piece of furniture, get it made by craftsmen, and make a living out of designing and producing furniture.”

When Shah posted pictures of her refurbished drawing room on a Facebook group, the response was amazing. Some people wanted her to refurbish their homes which helped her set up her business.

For her, working on the orders she got meant materialising other people’s dreams. They would share their requirements and she would design accordingly, “I work on low margins and invest a lot of time in the project from buying wood to the fabric,” she says. “I offer home service to where my team goes and works to the satisfaction of the customers.”

Shah who completed her BBA from IBA in 2013 didn’t pursue her academics any further as she got married in 2014. “When I started my business in 2020, my son was just one year old,” she says. “But this work is passion-driven, and I don’t just invest my time in it, I put my soul in it.”

Shah enjoys making all kinds of furniture for homes and hotels which includes beds, cupboards, tables, and chairs on modern lines, while her aim is to make reliable furniture.

Shah also does home visits but keeps this option for only nearby customers, because as a mother of two, she has plenty to do on her own domestic front.

With all the refurbishing and designing furniture that Shah has done in the last three years, she is still in the process of establishing her studio. “The drawback is that people want to see furniture on display, and I can only offer pictures of my work,” she says, adding that she is working on establishing a studio in her house. “However, it will only be accessible to serious buyers, considering security reasons.”

Shah goes to the market to purchase wood, fabric, and other required items, but also offers the option to her clients to buy the material themselves. “Sometimes customers feel that the fabric we are using is expensive or is not good quality, so we suggest them to provide it to us. My team visits customers with the colour palette and even with wood samples to avoid any confusion later.” Shah also provides after delivery services just to make sure the customer is satisfied with the furniture.

Shah uses velvet, malai velvet, Turkish, and jacquard fabric mostly while keekar, Sheesham, and partal (pinewood) are her favourite woods to work with. “The metal we use in our furniture are mild steel and stainless steel,” she says. “Pricing, material, and delivery ― these three things can make or break your business so you cannot fool around with these.”

From architecture to furniture

Architects design buildings, but it’s not the only way that they can use their talents. Interestingly, they also do a fantastic job when it comes to designing furniture.

So what is common between furniture and architecture? Obviously, the scale of architecture is so much bigger, but there happens to be a reasonably understandable link between the processes of designing furniture and designing the buildings in which that furniture is placed.

Quite simply, furniture is architecture on a small scale, because it is not just about structural design and detail, it is also meant to be used by humans! Perhaps that is what lay in young architect Zahra Ebrahim’s subconscious, when she quit her job in just five years to work with furniture.

She had become tired of her routine construction design work and felt that there was no growth in it. “My work was mostly long hours of coordination or construction design that usually takes a long time to be executed,” she says. “I felt as though I am wasting my time. In 2005, my friend and I decided to start something of our own.”

After a break of a few months from work, they renovated a flat and while doing that, they realised that they could focus on renovation of old furniture from design to finish. “We bought some old antique furniture pieces and redesigned them,” says Ebrahim, an NCA graduate. “For some time, we picked up old pieces and refurbished them. In the beginning, the designs mostly consisted of old glass bottles incorporated in tables or restoring old chairs. We did that for some time and after a few months we hosted an exhibition mostly for friends and family. The response was so amazing that we came up with the idea of starting our own furniture brand. Our redesigned antique piece was a hit and we got several orders for it. The problem was that we couldn’t replicate it, because we had re-done it from an old piece of antique furniture.”

It wasn’t long before they realised that they needed to design their own furniture, so that it could be replicated, because replication of old antiques is not possible. But just when their business started picking up, her friend, namesake and partner Zara had to move to Dubai, leaving her behind to handle the business solo. “At this point, I needed a place to start a workshop, because up until now we were working from home,” says Ebrahim. “Completing big orders required a bigger place, so I set up a small workshop in Keamari with two carpenters and a polish expert.”

Presently, the size of her workshop has increased three-fold and has 60 employees. The idea was not just to make a living, but do something that one enjoys doing. Ebrahim’s furniture, she claims, is sustainable and the design philosophy is also something that brings customers back to her again. Despite running a full set up, Ebrahim had to leave for the US for about eight months and had to request her sister-in-law to look after the dispatch of pending orders that they had. “She did very well with the orders and when I came back I realised that I had found someone who can help us grow,” says Ebrahim. “Later in 2011-2012, I used my savings to relocate our Keamari workshop to a new and bigger set up in Korangi.”

Two women and a carpenter

Ebrahim feels immensely proud that from a small team of two women and a carpenter, today it has grown into a substantial business.

Recently, Ebrahim has hired a designer. “We do not compromise on the quality of wood, fabric, or anything that is used,” she says, adding that her studies related to model movement and design language have helped her understand the work. “I started with redesigning and I have ended up as a craftsman.”

Hammering a male domain

In a predominantly male furniture market, people find the idea of female furniture makers rather strange, whether it is dealing with money or commitment to delivery. “Even though our work speaks for itself, we faced issues in the beginning and even now after several years, there are some customers who give us a tough time,” Ebrahim explains how women are usually comfortable with her when ordering or sharing their requirements. Being a woman who does woodwork has its own challenges such as men who doubt her professionalism and commitment to her work.

“More than 50% of the workers are from a specific ethnic background and they have never dealt with women who are financially independent, so initially it took them time to accept me as their boss,” says Ebrahim who goes to buy wood for the furniture herself. “But now they not only respect me but also my work.”

Ebrahim goes to the taali where she selects Sheesham [Indian rosewood] and Kail wood. “My main concern is quality so I make sure that the logs we select take 1.5 years to get ready to be made into furniture,” she says, explaining that they also work with imported wood and fabric depending upon the client’s requirement. “We have changed many vendors in all these years, because some compromised on quality, and others charged us more than the market.”

Both these young entrepreneurs want their customers to come back to them. Their edge is in sustainability and design. “Often we have young brides ordering furniture from us, because of the sentimental value of buying their first furniture which they obviously want to last many years,” says Shah. The personal input by Shah and Ebrahim in terms of quality of craftsmanship, selection of fabric and wood gives them an edge over the market.

Despite an extreme gender gap, the new crop of women furniture designers are not only setting a benchmark a trend for others to follow, they have also proven that in today’s society, gender is becoming more and more irrelevant.