SS Mens Wear
Shell Tameer Awards Runner Up 2012
Shahzeb Saeed, an MBA from Institute of Business Administration (IBA), with a solid work experience in the FMCG industry.
Shahzeb wanted to revolutionize the men’s fashion industry by bringing in quality apparel at a reasonable price tag. Leveraging on to his business school 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.
All these factors and sheer hard work & determination led to an estimated customer base of 15,000 people in a matter of initial 3 years of the business.
The venture that started from a small internship saving of Rs. 40,000, is now a flourishing business with an expanding product line and distribution spread. His ready-to-wear collection starts at Rs1,500 while bespoke shirts cost up to Rs3,500. According to one estimate, the business has shown a significant growth in terms of annual sales volumes through his two outlets at the prominent malls in Karachi and an online store.
“Thanks to Shell Tameer, for providing me with an excellent platform in helping me showcase and sell my products through Shell Tameer Awards and specially providing access to Shell internal employees and to support me in the process to integrate in their value chain as a registered vendor. Not only that, it helped me network with key individuals, practitioners and academia to ensure the further growth and expansion of my business.” He further added
“Our business impacts the lives of more than 50 families both full-time employees and daily wage earners. In the last 6 years, we have always tried our level best to pay our employees on time. I believe this is the most important thing in business that we should honor our commitments. This is one of the critical reasons that we still manage to deliver consistently in terms of quality and customer service, due to engaged and happy employees.
Going forward, Shazeb is very careful with his retail expansion due to the ongoing retail slowdown and higher mall rentals. However, he is fully geared up to expand further in the realm of ecommerce, as this is one area where the opportunity is available to scale quickly while trying to establish the foothold in Lahore & some major cities of Punjab.
His advice for budding entrepreneurs: Keep learning. It will be the best investment you will ever make in yourself.