One after another and the world has seen wonders coming out in the COVID outbreak. A new clothing brand known as Klothe has recently been seen breaking the internet. A clothing store which is entirely operating online is currently owning the spotlight.
Klothe Shop is as the name is, an online clothing shop which offers customized clothes. Customers can either buy the products already made available on their website, or they can customize any available product with their own design. According to the testimonials and reviews received from the surveys, products from Klothe Shop are highly recommended specially for people who cannot find a design that they can wear, anywhere online. The delivery is worldwide, very fast and accurate. All you have to do is send your design to Klothe Shop and get your desired product at your doorstep.
One of the biggest pros, as mentioned by their customers is the one-click payment process. The store supports PayPal Express Checkout that quickens the process of payment in a risk-free way. The uniqueness of this clothing store that is keeping it ahead of most of the clothing startups is how the developers structured it ‘technology based’. It is said that from the manufacturing of the product, its printing, order collection and payment transactions to delivery to the doorstep of the customer, the whole process is automated.
In an interview with the founder of Klothe Shop, Haziq Siddiqui, along with his partner in work, M. Maaz, we managed to gather information about this project firsthand mixed with some light humor.
Haziq Siddiqui is currently a student of technology and engineering in Dubai studying the cores of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. He is also a Microsoft Certified Developer.
M. Maaz is also a student of technology and engineering in Warsaw studying Cyber Network Security.
The interview was conducted online. “Thanks to technology that I can give an interview without wearing a mask”, said Haziq Siddiqui, he giggled. “The idea of a clothing store was definitely unexpected. Everybody has a side thing and for us belonging to the tech-industry, the last thing people expect from us is to take clothing as the first step into entrepreneurship. I think, to be precise, working on the idea of doing what I like brought me towards opening a clothing store”, he said.
The two fellows combining their skillset and talents gave the spark to Mr. Siddiqui’s idea of clothing store. “Handling the business, we don’t have divided responsibilities, you could think of us as one person with four hands”, said Mr. Maaz. “Anything more to that is handled through automation”, Mr. Siddiqui added.
The first point everyone likes to think of before starting a business is ‘what to sell’, which is mostly based on person’s liking and experience – in this case, it is different. How can someone with a tech background possibly think of clothing as a means of generating revenue? “Something that really is making all of it interesting for me is the fact that I can use all the technology I want in my clothing store. You know it is COVID-19 outbreak, there is no public interaction which made me come to a point where I used technology to let people shop without going out. My entire back office process is automated, technology-driven, entirely artificially intelligent, and that shows my loyalty with technology! In a nutshell, clothing or selling bicycles, tech will it always be – tech has it always been”, said Mr. Siddiqui.
“It is indeed a time of IT” said Mr. Maaz. “The core module of every business is IT, and so is ours. We are concentrating on technology and now our products i.e. custom printed products are, as the programmers say, ‘code dependent’. Not only it makes the work easier, it requires less manpower to make a custom product as the manufacturing, designing, payment and shipping are automated i.e. done digitally”, he added. “Shipping is not done digitally except that the customer receives a tracking link, I mean you just cannot download a physical shirt of course, but everything else is, yes”, replied Mr. Siddiqui while they both laughed.
Haziq Siddiqui, when asked about the initiation of the idea and his journey throughout, said, “Actually, really depressing in the beginning. Reading newspapers, listening to news channels and hearing how people are losing their lives was heavy on my heart. But again, life is about ups and downs and thicks and thins, and we as humans tend to find a way through all of it. Before Klothe started, all my time was spent researching on how COVID affects people and how countries and their governments are dealing with it. And so to be an effective contributor to the society, we mapped the blue prints of dealing with it, and to make it easy for others to deal with it as well, and since all of it was done with a clothing mindset, hence Klothe shop established. The journey has been very full of excitement, in terms of new things coming up every day. Researching on demographics, researching about behavior of people in this critical time, and how we can match our services accordingly. Our journey has been an endless loop of Research-Implement cycles”.
He has mentioned some points that are considered helpful for everyone who wants to be an entrepreneur and is afraid of the competition.
“Why did you choose the clothing business among many other options? About millions of stores deliver clothing, what makes you think yours will work?”, the interviewer asked.
“Well, with every other business, there will always be competitors and I believe that there is always someone better than yourselves in one field or another. Entrepreneurship revolves around the variety of ideas and skill sets, and that is a reason how every clothing store ends up running. We opened our business with a vision of following the people of knowledge, to learn from our mistakes and competitors and be better at what we do, by time. Well, let us say, if someone opens a clothing store after me, I will be one of the ‘million other online stores’ for them. And it will go on forever”, replied Mr. Siddiqui.
“How did you come up with the name?” they were asked.
Mr. Siddiqui chuckled, and said, “We wanted our name to be very simple, something that is easily understandable following all the ‘naming convention’ topics on the internet. We ended up with the most simplistic one that we could make out of our own names, and it was H&M, but you know, well… Klothe, as simple as it gets!”
The interview was concluded with the final words of Mr. Maaz as he said, “I just wanted to thank our customers, supporters, family and friends who initially helped us in building it up at a time when it was just an idea. In addition to that, I would like to thank you for inviting us to this lovely conversation, the entire Epistle News Network including the media team for featuring us!”
Klothe shop is accessible online at ‘www.klothe.shop’. They are available on social media i.e. Instagram and Facebook, but they are more prominent on Instagram.
Even though they recently started, their marketing tactics are making them viral on the social media. With progress like this, we can see them becoming the world’s favorite online clothing store.
The interview was taken by Hamna Khalid, a student of International Relations at Corvinus University in Budapest, Hungary.
