Crafting a business from passion
Lucknow-based Swati Seth quit the corporate rat race to start a
handicraft venture, The Color Caravan.
It may have taken Swati Seth nine years and six
jobs to figure out what she wanted to do, but it has been worth the wait.
The 34-year-old’s labour of love is The Color Caravan, a 7 lakh handicraft
business.
Seth, who graduated from the South Delhi
Polytechnic College in 2001, started working with interior designers and
textile design houses in college itself. After graduation, she changed
three jobs in a couple of years. “I was never happy with the quality of
work and knew I didn’t want to do this,” says Seth. So she quit her job and
travelled for a month. On her return, she worked for a year with Wipro BPO
in Delhi, and then came a five-year stint at Afaqs, a marketing
communications firm. It was at this point that Seth, an avid traveller,
started to look at the potential of working with handicrafts. “Nearly 2-3
years before setting up The Color Caravan, I began collecting handicrafts,
getting in touch with the craftsmen and NGOs for a possible venture,” says
Seth.
Finally, in July 2010, she quit her job, and having
already worked out the design aspect, she focused on arranging the seed
capital. After her bank loan application was rejected, Seth used her
savings and borrowed from her family to rake in 2.5 lakh. She kept the
operating expenses low by working from home, and since she only kept
product samples at home—deliveries were made as per orders—Seth didn’t have
to invest in warehouse space either. Finally, in October, Seth launched The
Color Caravan with just a page on Facebook, followed by an exhibition in a
mall on Diwali. In fact, most of her seed capital went into showcasing her
collection in exhibitions, while her social media gambit paid off when she
had bagged her first international order from Australia within 24 hours of
launching.
The business model was, and remains, simple. Seth
puts up pictures of her products on the Facebook page, which is also the
medium for interested parties to contact her. She then reverts with the
product list—baby clothes, bamboo jewellery, cushion covers, etc—and
account details. The prices range from 200-4,000.
Of course, there have been challenges. Seth started
supplying to retail stores in Delhi, Gurgaon and Bangalore, but found that
“the retailers were not pushing to sell the products and the unsold
inventory often came back in a bad shape. So I withdrew,” she says. She has
also cut down on the exhibitions as they have become too expensive. From
6-7 exhibitions a year, she now participates only in 2-3. The biggest
learning, however, has been that merely sourcing products can’t sustain the
business. So, in January 2011, she started making her own products, and
today this brings in about 70% of her revenue. Nine months later, her
enterprise became a threestrong team, with one part-time employee.
Another milestone came in March 2012, when she
shifted back to her hometown Lucknow due to personal reasons. The business,
nevertheless, continued to thrive. Today, she receives about 400 orders a
month on an average, and showcases the works of artists from over eight
states. Though she pays herself a modest salary of 10,000 a month, the
business is yet to break even. Earlier this year, she re-tapped the retail
route, tying up with stores in London and Dubai, and is eyeing a gross
turnover of 7 lakh this year. Next in line is the setting up of an online
store, which is likely to be unveiled by 2013.
AMIT KUMAR ETW121217
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