Uncommon threads: What frustrates the boss men turns into big business

Shahzeb Saeed fills niche for executives who wanted quality affordable dress shirts.

KARACHI:

Hellfire Lite's collar base is tangerine. The Gingham Style's blue-and-white check placket pops against a background of black. There is even a Freeze Floral which carries a blue chintz-like highlight that will show as you lean forward. The names of the designs of Shahzeb Saeed's shirts are as feisty as their colours but it is their price tags that will truly surprise: Rs1,500.

In contrast, is Saeed himself. He is a reticent interviewee who does not want any share of the limelight for a success story which has received much media attention at the right time. He comes by foot to the café where we meet and disappears into alleyways once the conversation is over. He bemoans an earlier story covering the financial details of his line. He doesn't want to discuss financials.

And so it is difficult to pin down the man behind this business. But its history speaks for itself.

Saeed grew up in Nazimabad and Federal B Area, the son of a banker, who would have, for all intents and purposes also perhaps joined a bank after doing his MBA from the Institute of Business Administration.

During his preliminary years at IBA, he had a plan to start a wedding company but it died a premature death on paper. It was later, during an internship at Chevron Pakistan, that Saeed found a replacement. He observed executives there griping about a shortage of formal shirts that were not only well-stitched and made of quality fabric, but reasonably priced. "I realised that there is significant market size that could be tapped in to by rolling out the product that these professionals look for," he told The Express Tribune.

And so, around four years ago, when he was just 24 years old and close to completing his MBA, Saeed decided to start his own label of what he wanted to be a classy, fashionable and yet affordable line of shirts for professionals, ranging from management trainees to CEOs.



Despite being a business student, he was more interested in art and aesthetics, a perfectionist by nature who had been fastidious about his own sartorial choices from an early age. It certainly helped that he dabbled in graphic design and illustration during his college days. He found it easy to come up with fresh and appealing designs while maintaining quality.

True to his IBA training, he did his homework by identifying the ways of working of almost all the leading menswear brands by visiting their factories and outlets. When his peers would leave campus to go home and sleep, Saeed would hit the markets and cloth wholesalers to understand fabric and supplies, thread counts and dyes. He spent all his spare time poring over the details of what would make a business.

When he was ready, he put in a meagre Rs40,000 and hit up Facebook as a launch pad. "I vividly remember that tremendous feeling of elation and satisfaction when my first sale took place on Facebook - a Rs1,000 shirt." The next milestone was the formal launch of his label through a stall placement at the reception for an IBA alumni dinner in January 2010. "Though I had come up with a good product, I did not have any place to sell it apart from e-retailing," he explained. He sold 20 shirts. From then on, with help from displays at corporate events and well-placed IBA alumni in business circles, Saeed capitalised on access to his target market with minimal marketing. "I even got referrals from corporate executives," he added.

When his clientele kept pressing for an outlet he got a dedicated shelf at STUDIO S that used to have an outlet in Dolmen Mall, on Tariq Road. He even tried transforming the upper portion of his residence into a studio. This was around the same time he won third prize as one of the 10 entrepreneurs nominated for the Shell Tameer Awards 2012, something that gave him that final confidence to expand.

For two years, between 3pm and 9pm, his customers used to visit by appointment. "I was discretely operating through a residence in Defence Housing Authority where this sort of commercial activity, selling 200 to 300 odd shirts every month at that point in time, was certainly not allowed," he said. The neighbours complained about the cars and ultimately he was forced to look for a shop space after paying DHA a penalty.

The flagship store opened at Zamzama Boulevard, followed by one at Ocean Mall in August 2013. In February this year, he opened in Centaurus Mall, Islamabad. As it expanded, Saeed's line has created 15 direct and 60 indirect jobs.

His ready-to-wear collection starts at Rs1,500 while bespoke shirts cost up to Rs3,500. According to one estimate, the business has grown 500% to one million rupees in annual sales. Not bad for one that started out with Rs40,000. And his advice for budding entrepreneurs: If you want to start something, you should start it now because there is no such thing as a perfect business plan; You will eventually learn by doing it

Published in The Express Tribune, June 29^th, 2014.