JWS Pakistan “Success Stories” contains case studies of successful people

Ms. Alia Hassan is an innovative entrepreneur from Gujranwala. She has been successfully running the business of preparing “Jewelry Boxes” for the last six (6) years. During this short time period, she has been able to get orders from famous brand outlets and sell her product in the nearby cities of Lahore, Narowal, Sialkot, Gujrat, Jhelum, and Rawalpindi & Qila Ahmedabad.

She indirectly imports raw material from china. Her Monthly sales reach up to 210,000 with workers team of 8-10 persons including two salesmen for order taking. She explained that following were the key elements that played key role in making her business a success story within a short time span of six (6) years.

Business Success Factors:

• Unique Business: Among the many small scale businesses in the region, the idea of preparing jewelry boxes was unique with scatters demand pattern. However, this uniqueness helped her business grow quickly as her business was able to get contracts from leading brand store in various cities.
• New & Innovative Product Designs: Her designed boxes are unique and very different from the available designs in the market. This uniqueness and fine quality of the boxes make her product appealing and generates good sale.
• Linkages with Key Brand Stores: Her business gained contracts from the famous brand stores like DAMAS in Lahore and other shopping malls. This consistent demand helped her to gradually grow her business and improve her production setup over the period of time.

How the Challenges were met?

• Lack of Good Quality Raw Material: Initially she purchased material from the local market, however, she was not satisfied with the quality. She then established links with importers and started importing required material indirectly from China.
• Advance payments for raw material: Material purchase required advance payment to importers and she was already deficit in financing. Therefore, she re negotiated with her clients and started taking advance payment to manage this issue successfully.
• Financial Constraints: Rising from the very poor family, financial constraints was a great challenge, however, she managed to borrow from family, mobilized her savings and borrowed from JWS Pakistan to meet her startup and expansion requirements successfully.

Future Outlook:

• Import Material Directly from China: At the moment, she is importing raw material indirectly (through other persons). However, this creates problem for her as sometime the quality of material is not good and not as per the listed demand. Therefore, she wants to visit china and directly purchase material after inspecting the quality of the material.
• Increase Raw Material Stock: One of the challenges she has been facing is the shortage of material she requires to meet wide range of products. Therefore, she wants to increase her inventory of material to ensure that the required material is available when the order is placed.
• Setup her Facebook Page: She is a literate women (intermediate) and has been into the teaching job prior to her marriage. She is aware of Facebook and wants to setup her business page on the social media to promote her products. This may improve her direct sales to the community and improve her profit margins.

Asia Perveen’s story is really inspiring. Her husband used to polish furniture and earn livelihood of the family, unfortunately he fell ill due to paralysis. She now had to earn for her family and she started working as housemaid and also started accepting Zakat & Fitrana

That was the turning point, she first started working in GIFT University as women guard and later mobilized savings, qarze hasna, borrowing from JWS Pakistan and established her own garments shop in the town. She now visits Faisalabad every week for purchasing cloth worth 70,000 and her monthly sales reach to over 300,000 per month. She really turned her fortune with hard work and commitment.

Facing Covid-19

I was able to meet the challenge by relying on my savings and selling cloths from my home as shops were not allowed to operate. Thankfully, the business is again growing after the lockdown.

Business Success Factors:

• Own Business: Leaving the miserable job of housemaid and accepting Zakat & Fitrana was the first right decision as she opted to start her own trading business of garments. This initial step was the turning point of her fate as she is now a successful businesswoman.
• Women Entrepreneur: There are very few women led shops that sell garments and ladies wear. Therefore, her gender helped her in attracting more and more women clients at her shop as they felt comfortable in dealing with her.
• New & Innovative Product Designs: Her inventory of cloths and women-wear are unique and very different from the available designs in the market. This uniqueness and fine quality of cloths make her shop appealing to the clients.

How the Challenges were met?

• Social Barrier: Asiya Perveen belongs to a village in Gujranwala, the biggest challenge she faced was crossing the social barrier, facing comments of people around her that she is crossing moral limits. But she patiently faced this challenge and emerged as a successful entrepreneur.
• Lack of Financing: Migration from the state of accepting Zakat & Fitrana to that of an entrepreneur was not easy. Financing was the 2^nd biggest hurdle in the way forward. She had to avail financing from JWS Pakistan and seek assistance from people around her in meeting the financing needs.
• Purchasing Cloths: She initially purchased cloths from the local market but soon realized that Faisalabad is much cheaper market. However, it was very difficult for her to visit there alone, but she overcame this problem with her willpower and started regularly visiting Faisalabad market for making purchases.

Future Outlook:

• Improve Variety of Products: She wants to enhance the variety of products available at her shop including the higher end quality products to serve variety of client needs.
• Face uplifting of Shop: As her sales are increasing, she wants to improve the shop outlet by decorating and making her products more visible to the clients.
• Pamphlets for Marketing: She wants to get leaflets, pamphlets and visiting cards of her shop and use them as marketing tool to promote her sales.