Osama Bhuiya and Pinky Peya talk about their unique website, FashionHQ, and what it means for a customer to have a complete shopping solution under a single online platform.
Co-Founder and
Chief Executive Officer
FashionHQ
PINKY PEYA
Co-Founder
FashionHQ
Please tell us the story of how you partnered up and how that led to FashionHQ.
Osama Bhuiya: Our partnership started with our relationship. We met at the start of COVID and since there was nothing much to do and nowhere to go, we would usually end up talking about work. During Eid-al-Fitr of 2020, when Dhaka was in lockdown, I was desperately searching for a panjabi online. The process was very frustrating; searching individual pages and websites, brand by brand. Even after finding a few choice designs, it was difficult to keep track of all the pages and sites I had visited. When I finally ordered from a brand’s website, the after-sales communication and delivery service were even more unpleasant. After discussing this with Pinky, we figured that there was a gap between the fashion and the e-commerce industry. That’s when we came up with the idea of FashionHQ – a fashion-focused e-commerce platform showcasing various local renowned brands and designers. The HQ in FashionHQ stands for headquarters, which is what we aim to make this website into. In simple terms, FashionHQ is a website with all sorts of fashion solutions for both the buyer and seller under one platform. Customers could easily purchase articles and keep a record of their likes and preferences. It would make it much easier to shop even post lockdown, as moving around in Dhaka city is such a struggle. As soon as this idea came up, our romantic relationship turned into a business partnership. And as the days passed, our partnership became even stronger, leading to our marriage, Alhamdulillah!
FashionHQ carries a wide range of clothing lines and collections, catering to virtually everyone. What are some of the biggest fashion trends you’ve noticed among men, women and children in 2022 so far? What have been some of the best-sellers?
Pinky Peya: Demands in the fashion industry actually rise and fall with the change of seasons. Demands can also rise if a celebrity or an influencer endorses a certain design or style of clothing. So, to cater to the vast customer base, FashionHQ and its vendors have to bring out new designs and collections every few weeks. However, in terms of best-sellers from FashionHQ, we have observed that fast-fashion products, such as shirts, pants, t-shirts, polos, tops and jackets are in higher demand than products such as salwar kameezes, sarees, panjabis and party dresses.
APART FROM PROVIDING LOCAL DESIGNERS WITH A PLATFORM TO SHOWCASE THEIR PRODUCTS TO A DIVERSE RANGE OF CUSTOMERS, WE ARE NOW STARTING A FULFILMENT SUBSCRIPTION MODEL FOR VENDORS AND ONLINE RETAILERS
What role does FashionHQ play in supporting local designers?
Pinky Peya: Apart from providing local designers with a platform to showcase their products to a diverse range of customers, we are now starting a fulfilment subscription model for vendors and online retailers. In this operation model, along with showcasing their products on FashionHQ, we will also be providing vendors with 5 unique services. These services include providing them with a warehouse to store their products, helping them maintain inventory levels by providing live inventory records, helping vendors with packaging the product after intensive quality checks, dispatching the products according to the vendor’s orders and handling the complete after-sales service, and lastly and most significantly, providing them with a studio photoshoot for their new collections. All services will come under a single subscription.
We came up with this new affiliation process after taking critical feedback from vendors. Most online vendors find it difficult to concurrently manage production, storage, shoots, marketing, dealing with customers, order fulfilment and after-sales service. Our new fulfilment subscription programme particularly focuses on supporting local vendors to minimise costs and efforts made for operations, enabling them to focus more on their own designs and customers. We believe that this method will help lend a hand to local designers and vendors in their business operations.
Logistically speaking, what are the advantages of being an online fashion store over traditional brick-and-mortar outlets?
Osama Bhuiya: An online store enjoys numerous advantages over traditional physical shops. To simply state a few, an online store is much easier and more convenient to browse through, as it records your likes, search algorithms, past purchases and other purchase behaviours. Browsing through an online store also helps you to compare prices and designs which is logistically impossible to keep track of in physical stores. Additionally, online stores help you find the exact product you are looking for, along with various other available options. And most importantly, browsing through online stores saves a customer’s time and energy compared to browsing through traditional brick-and-mortar outlets. In this day and age, it is imperative for every brand to have an online presence as businesses will gradually start to operate online.
What does the journey forward look like for FashionHQ?
Osama Bhuiya: The journey until now was a huge struggle in itself. The biggest challenge was to battle the pandemic and its after-effects on fashion e-commerce. Fashion was not very high on people’s list of priorities at that time. After overcoming that challenge came the issue of educating the audience and vendors about the business model and its operations. Many vendors and sellers on FashionHQ were comparing our business model with that of Daraz, which of course is way different. Customers too were associating the business model with that of a fashion page on social media. In any case, struggling and overcoming obstacles like these successfully is how businesses grow. In terms of FashionHQ’s journey forward, we will be aiming to make shopping for fashion apparel and accessories much easier and accessible for customers and provide complete support to local designers and manufacturers. For now, the focus is on warehousing, order fulfilment and product shoots, but soon, manufacturing, sourcing and fulfilling orders internationally will be key directives as well.
We believe that there are bigger and more complex challenges to face in the years ahead. There are a lot of plans in the pipelines and some are in motion. We hope to undertake them successfully and face whatever challenges that lie ahead of us, head-on.
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