How many of us leave the conventional methods and follow what we are really passionate about? If you are one of them, you will relate to the story of Srijata Bhatnagar, the founder (and CEO) of EthnicShack, a Bangalore based e-commerce startup. EthnicShack is India's most loved brand for Handmade, Hand-woven & Handcrafted products. Since childhood, Srijata was always very passionate about handmade, hand-woven and handcrafted products. Her trait of doing something different form the rest inspired her to make her passion into a business reality.
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Srijata Bhatnagar, Founder - EthnicShack.com[/caption]EthnicShack makes lively and exclusive hand crafted Apparels, Accessories and Home Decor products that caters to the taste of new age highly fashion and trend conscious women, kids and men. Their products restore the old glory of our past by appreciating and popularizing forgotten Indian Handicrafts. "We believe in breaking the stereotypes that Ethnic is only for special occasions and handcrafted products are boring and costly. Our brand has an extensive range of uber stylish products developed in collaboration with rural artisans and fashion enthusiasts that are affordable and can be part of our daily life,: she says.
It has been about a year since they started their operation. Currently they market their products through their website and are looking to expand their product into online market places slowly. "Products will soon be available on ebay, flipkart, snapdeal, amazon and many others. We will also start with our International foray soon," she adds excitedly.
EthincShack products are made using traditional techniques, having Indian character and yet made for modern generation and times. They focus on brilliant designs and manufacture quality products that are affordable too. They work with rural and marginal artisans very closely and co-create these products with the help of our team of qualified designers from NIFT, NID and other esteemed design institutes. "We aspire to be the leading brand for handmade products yet with a modern outlook," says Megha Gupta, a team member who handles their media relations.
"In the process we discovered some forgotten arts and crafts from rural parts of India and met with passionate tribal and village artisans who are struggling to keep their art alive. Learnt about different natural materials, colors, time intensive processes used to make just one piece of these arts and craft products; learnt how majority of these artisans are village women, who have acquired these skills from their mothers and grandmothers since childhood and are trying to keep it alive simply for the love of it," says Srijata.
The company does a lot of research on trends and preferences of their target market. After brainstorming sessions with the designers, they come up with designs, cuts, products that may suit today's multi-tasking generation. "This way, all our products bear exclusive prints and cuts," she adds. You will also see a lot of Fusion in their products. They have a team of 10 people working from their Office/Studio based out of Bangalore who handle Design, PR, Marketing, Legal and Finance matters of the company. Apart from this, they have about 30+ artisans in their extended family who they work with very closely. The artists are from all over the country.
The online startup is currently in bootstrapped mode but looking for investment to expand and generate 3 times revenue as compared to last year. "We have an over-whelming demand and acceptance due to the fact that we are helping the small scale and grassroots level artisans in rural areas of Andhra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, West Bengal etc. by working with them directly," says Srijata. They are now going to engage with artists from North Eastern States and North India. "This way we will widen the spectrum of our offerings," she adds.
As a message for future Entrepreneurs, Srijata says, "Failure comes as a combo package with entrepreneurship, but no one talks about it. I think it's important we realize that failure teaches us more than success, and we should embrace failure more gracefully. Even Thomas Edison failed more than 1000 times before being able to successfully create the electric bulb.” Being an entrepreneur who has bootstrapped her startup, she adds, “People starting up on bootstrapping should remember that if you don't have sufficient amount of savings and/or other source of income and/or a partner to back up for your expenses; it's going to be extremely tough to survive."
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