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Knocking Doors for Creating New Ventures

This case study was written by Muhammad Azam Roomi and Kshama
Srinivasan at the University of Bedfordshire. It is intended to be used as the
basis for class discussion rather than to illustrate either effective or
ineffective handling of a management situation. All names and places have
been changed for the privacy of the entrepreneur.

© 2011, University of Bedfordshire

 

No part of this publication may be copied, stored, transmitted, reproduced or

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Knocking Doors for Creating New Ventures

Rebecca was shattered in her refugee camp. The battling scenes of her home
town kept flashing across her mind, which had forced her family to fled Crater
Aden. “Leave quickly, the rescue operation is on...” screamed some body. Only
three hours later, the family was reached at the army camp to leave for Britain
the next day.

The 1967 Israel war between the Jews and the Arabs caused wide
repercussions in several places which further intensified with the British
government’s decision to withdraw its political sovereignty from Crater Aden.
This led many of the Jew families to move into Britain for refuge and Rebecca’s
was one among them.

Rebecca and her husband Peter fled the land with some jewellery while leaving
behind all of their wealth. Peter was a mechanical engineer and Rebecca a
professional tailor. Due to the war emergence and hurry to leave the home, they
could not even carry their education certificates, which closed the doors to their
professional careers in the U.K. This made Rebecca ponder over several odd
jobs but finally she decided to start her independent business. She sold her
wedding ring for 500 pounds and rented a house in Hoe Street, London, which
could also spare a place for her business. Then she realised that there were no
shops in her locality selling haberdasheries, which made her sell some of her
jewellery and invest in the haberdashery business for making a quick start. The
basement of her house was turned into the haberdashery shop and called Exotic.
She started selling customised products to those wanting particular brands and
designs, this made the business unique. She managed the business with her
husband’s help while most of her customers were the Asian women. She found
that many clients wanted a lady tailor for mending their old clothes and thought of
doing them herself. This made her open a mending section for women apparels
which further diversified the business.

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One day she came across a newspaper advertisement from Meera Roy, the
owner of a dress making shop named ‘Elegance’ in Brick Lane, East London,
wanting women tailors to make the traditional clothes for the Asian women.
Rebecca planned to do it, though it was a huge risk without having any tailors on
hand.

Rebecca had immense skills in designing western outfits and learnt little about
Asian clothes, from her friend Esha. The latter was an Indian fashion designer
who used to work for several companies, before settling for a marriage abroad.
Rebecca discussed the proposal with her who called it a good idea. However,
they needed people to work for them, thus spent a week in contacting their Asian
friends and housewives at large to discuss further. They found that many of them
were skilled in tailoring the Asian outfits and willing to help them. Then Rebecca
and Esha defined their individual roles in the business. The idea of undertaking
large tailoring orders now seemed feasible after acquiring a few people ready to
work with them. However, they needed an ideal place for making them while
renting out any space was too expensive.

Esha finally agreed to let out the storage space at the basement of her home in
Hoe Street, on a monthly rent of 300 pounds. Bill Roddick, an architect of repute
was engaged to convert the place into a manufacturing unit and stock house.
Rebecca developed a partnership with Esha, where the latter agreed for a 20%
stake in the business, in addition to a monthly salary for managing this section.
Rebecca went back to Meera Roy and discussed their respective roles. While
Meera agreed to supply the fabrics and orders for stitching, Rebecca agreed to
provide other accessories such as threads, zips and buttons. The tailoring
section functioned as a unit of the firm and this was Rebecca’s first attempt to
mobilise a large team of workers, which made a good business.

A year later, Meera Roy decided to sell her business for 10,000 pounds since
she was leaving the country. Rebecca took an entrepreneurial move and
grabbed the opportunity. She again pledged her jewels and invested the money
in this business, which already had a bigger space, better location and more

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customers. She shifted her own business to this outlet from her home and further
introduced the latest sewing machines at the factory to speed up work and
efficiency. Besides, she offered to pay more on completing urgent orders, which
motivated them to work faster and better. They were paid more for introducing
new designs, which enhanced their creativity and added to the firm’s portfolio.
Rebecca had a good communication with her workers and maintained a caring
personal relationship with them which facilitated valuable feedbacks to the firm.

Although there were several orders coming in, it was the mending section that
gave a new insight to her future business. She found that most of the trailing
dresses worn by the Asian women; get damaged at the ends as they walked.
She thought several ways to overcome this and discussed with Ann, a textile
designer to devise a padding material, which came through, after four months of
research and experiments with different fabrics. However, she needed someone
to manufacture the product, which seemed expensive in the U.K.

One day, while she was discussing the idea with her friends, some of them
suggested her to contact their business partner Deepak Roy in India. He was a
known textile manufacturer and exporter of bedding material. He agreed to
provide the demand at affordable prices, and Rebecca’s first lot of outfits with the
extra padding came out in 1974, which added elegance to the women clothing
and attracted many more customers.

However, six years later, the garment factory managed by Esha came to an end,
when the lady decided to move to France. It was a big setback to Rebecca’s
business because she had no time to manage it while finding an efficient person
like Esha was also not easy. Besides, overheads and labour were also becoming
expensive. She finally decided to sell the business to her friend Saira Bennet for
a reasonable price.

However, she now decided to hire tailors on job to make readymade garments,
which could bring in good revenue with less responsibility. The U.K. market had
plenty of Western clothes but offered limited range of sizes in trousers for the

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heavy women. She conducted a wide market research to find that there was a
potential market for the big women trousers and designed them in sizes of OX,
OXX and OXXX. She advertised in several newspapers for contract workers,
working from outside and found that expert tailors from London’s Middlesex
Street and York way in Kings Cross, were willing to work at negotiable prices.
She contacted several wholesalers for supplying the materials and started the
business to make trousers which proved highly successful.

The local government supplied free uniforms to students, which were sold at
shops authorised by the schools, when the students produced the uniform
vouchers. The schools entered into contracts with the makers of uniforms and
Rebecca listed herself with the authorities for supplying them. This brought the
firm huge revenue in the 1980’s, which helped her to further diversify the
business into children’s party wears.

She made an intensive research on party clothes and asked Sally Jones, a
fashion designer from France to come up with creative designs. The prototypes
were altered several times and finally a tender was made in the newspapers for
contract workers in London to make them at economic prices. She imported
cheap fabric from China and used colourful themes; that could make the dresses
popular among girls for their vibrant colours and exclusive designs.

While the business was making good fortunes, Rebecca was struck with a
sudden blow when the local authorities asked her to shift her shop from the
locality because they were altering the roads and architects in the area.
However, she took things in her stride and moved down to Hoe Street. Most of
her customers now were students and mothers. Pregnant mothers who came in
for school uniforms were looking out for other baby products, which made her
introduce a stream of other products for the new-born apart from the older
children. This increased the firm’s income and added to its portfolio.

However, in 1995 the uniform business came to an end, when bulk of the
customers started to purchase uniforms from the stores of their own choice and

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not those suggested by the schools. This made most schools to withdraw their
contracts with their uniforms suppliers. Resultantly Rebecca was left perturbed
for a few months. This was a great loss to her uniform business, which fetched a
regular income over the years.

A few months later, a man Gabi Abraham from Jerusalem visited her stores and
told that he was a retailer in garments. The man was impressed with her wide
collection of clothes when she took him through the firm’s catalogues. He was
looking out for imported party wears for children between ages of three to ten
years. She put across her experience in the industry and exhibited the patent
designs of her company, besides she even offered them at affordable prices.
This led to several rounds of discussions and finally she agreed to customise
products for him, apart from accepting standard orders. She offered special
discounts for huge consignments but insisted upon selling them with her brand
name on. It led to a profitable deal and became popular at the retail showroom,
which gave an impetus to her export business.

The lady is the age of seventy now and shares with pride, “The business teaches
me a new lesson each day and I’m still learning to find out new opportunities to
grow my business and ways to solve the emerging problems, which makes me a
child again.” The mammoth success of her entrepreneurial business has a few
problems cropping up as well. It now faces serious problems from authorities
forbidding the customers from parking vehicles anywhere in the vicinity of her
shop which is badly affecting the business.

Would this compel her to again shift her shop to another location is a pressing
question? She has trained her two daughters in the business for a smooth
change of reigns, when she decides to call it a day. However, it remains to see
how successful would they be in carrying out the company’s long established
success culture into the future?

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