In a conversation, the Co-founder & CEO of STRIDES CO, Zahia Khondoker, explains how the team was inspired to start a clothing brand, the challenges of maintaining a fashion e-commerce platform and steering the business through the pandemic
How was Strides Co born? What was the inspiration behind its idea?
When we started Strides, my brother Alavi and I were already in the garments manufacturing industry. This experience gave us the skills, knowledge and inspiration to start a clothing brand. We found it unfair that Bangladesh is the second largest garments exporter, yet the quality standards and product diversity we have excelled at globally has not translated to the local markets. Bangladesh has become an expert in global apparel but the local Bangladeshi population is not enjoying it enough.
It’s difficult and time-consuming to find high-quality, contemporary clothing amongst the plethora of small and big retail stores and online pages. We wanted to solve that problem by building a multi-brand fashion platform that gives the modern Bangladeshi easy access to a wide variety of clothing that are consistent with global fashion trends from high quality brands under one roof.
We teamed up with our friend Ariq, who has the tech expertise we needed to kickstart fashion e-commerce platform, StridesCo.com. The ‘Co’ is and abbriviation of “collective” and refers to our brand partners.
What have been the challenges of creating and maintaining a platform like Strides Co?
What have been the challenges of creating and maintaining a platform like Strides Co?The challenges are endless when it comes to growing and maintaining a fashion e-commerce platform. As an online-only brand, building consumer trust and reducing the hesitancy in online shopping has been our main challenge. To bridge this gap, we offer Trial at Delivery, where customers can pick out multiple products to try at home so they can check their fittings before finalizing their purchases. Our business is completely centred around our customers and customer service is our top priority.
We have also invested a large amount of our effort on the technology side of the platform. We are continually exploring innovative e-commerce solutions to provide a premier online fashion marketplace, which comes with unique challenges. On the frontend, this includes a robust heavily tested UX to ensure a pleasant and inviting experience for our customers. We focused on efficiency on our backend so our platform will be able to scale as the product lines and brand grows. Lastly, we are consistently utilising our analytics tools to optimize data to effectively anticipate future customer trends.
What problems did you face when the pandemic struck, and what strategies helped you thrive even in this global economic situation?
Today, it’s very important for brands, both local and international, to quickly respond to changes in the world and the pandemic accelerated this process even further. We inevitably faced some challenges in the supply chain – but we were able to overcome these issues by planning even further in advance.
Fortunately, with our operations entirely online, we were able to continue business as usual. In fact, as people stayed home, previously reluctant consumers started to experiment and become more comfortable with shopping online. We are always trying to improve the online shopping experience by providing trials, easy exchange and return policies, next day deliveries, gift packaging and 24/7 customer service online.
As of now, the brand’s target customer base is mainly between 18 and 35 years. How do you envision its expansion over the next decade?
As of now, the brand’s target customer base is mainly between 18 and 35 years. How do you envision its expansion over the next decade?The 18-35 age group remains a key target market for us with the majority of e-commerce users falling in this category. However, we are seeing more and more people shopping online in the 35+ age groups. There are no rules to fashion and it all depends on a person’s individual style. While tastes may change over time with age, the fun and excitement for fashion never changes. Our goal is to offer a variety of fashion items that are both classic and trendy for everyone and all occasions.
Can you share with us your experience with Bangladesh Angels and a bit about their contribution to the success of Strides Co.?
Through Bangladesh Angels, we met Mr. Kowser Nirob who expressed a desire to join Strides Co in our pre-seed round. With his involvement we were able to build and further grow our capabilities, such as our in-house marketing team, which has been integral to our growth.
Photographs: Courtesy of Strides Co
For more information, please follow https://www.stridesco.com/