Aurora Magazine

Promoting excellence in advertising

Foot loose and fancy free

Published in Jan-Feb 2016

The demand for bespoke and affordable shoes has increased and Pakistani entrepreneurs are slowly cashing in on it.

The demand for trendy, comfortable, and affordable footwear is growing exponentially locally as well as internationally. Not only are consumers brand conscious, they expect a value-for-money proposition when shopping for footwear.

Concurrently, GEM (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor) places the Total Early-stage Entrepreneurial Activity (TEA) rate for Pakistan at 12% – which is higher than the 10% average for the Asia-Pacific region. This rise in innovation and risk-taking behaviour that entrepreneurship entails has already been seen in the fashion industry, and now entrepreneurial efforts are branching out into casual and semi-formal footwear lines.

Although startups in footwear are well aware that the competition from established brands with significant retail presences pose many challenges, they remain optimistic in their outlook because of growing demand, and their own passion to create a product that matches international quality standards. These small businesses have identified several gaps in the footwear segment including a lack of understanding on the part of brands as to what customers really want as well as the poor quality of customer service they provide.

Markhor’s success story of creating bespoke shoes is well known. There are, however, other small brands that are trying to establish their own identities in this increasingly competitive space. Here we profile three.

The Shoe Makers & Co
When Hammad Ahmed and Ahmed Hambal Akif (both have day jobs as accountants managing the finances of their respective family businesses) found out how much people were paying for men’s shoes made by international brands (the raw materials for which are easily available in Pakistan), they decided to moonlight as shoemakers. Their business, The Shoe Makers & Co (TSM & Co.) was established in 2011 as a business providing a bespoke shoe service to corporate executives.

The shoes, which match international quality standards and are branded similarly (such as the classic Derbies, Borgues and Oxfords), are created by a team of skilled Pakistani craftsmen who have between them 30 to 50 years of experience in the art of handcrafting shoes. Selling at an average price of Rs 12,000 per pair, the company works with tanneries in Italy and Pakistan to source raw material in a process that goes through over 45 steps and requires 100 hours of hands-on skilled craftsmanship to create the final product.

In 2013, when the partners saw that they were missing out on a large chunk of business because their bespoke service took between 12 to 15 days to make (from the first sizing of the customer to the delivery of the shoes), they decided to launch a ready-to-wear line to cater to busy executives who wanted a pair of shoes immediately. Ahmed says that their experience in bespoke shoes helped them understand which designs were most popular and this proved invaluable in terms of inventory keeping for the ready to wear business.


Although startups in footwear are well aware that the competition from established brands with significant retail presences pose many challenges, they remain optimistic in their outlook because of growing demand, and their own passion to create a product that matches international quality standards.


Although the entrepreneurs started their business by displaying shoes in people’s drawing rooms, they now have their own online store and a retail presence in Karachi, with plans to open up yet another store in Karachi and then two in Lahore and Islamabad respectively.

Ahmed believes that the local shoe market, despite being populated by big brands, has never really focused on customer demand and service and has essentially offered the same designs and colours in men’s shoes for the last six to eight years. TSM & Co. are set to change this trend and although their products are priced at a premium, they will ensure that the customer always comes first and gets exactly what he wants. Ahmed is also intent on passing any cost advantages to the customer, and the pricing model is cost dependent, rather than mimicking competition. Although TSM & Co.’s ready-to- wear brand is doing well, Ahmed says that “completely hand-crafted shoes are our pride and while mass production might not be an option for us, the attention to detail we have cannot be achieved by mass produced brands.”

3 Footwear
Mahrukh Isa could not find a comfortable pair of shoes, Kanza Naheed was unhappy she could not find size 11 shoes and Saba Magsi was tired of the pointy shoes and flashy sandals the market offered. It was this combination of problems that enticed these three young business students (still in their last year of BBA) to start making shoes of their own, giving birth to 3 Footwear in 2011. With no business background other than their business studies, the three friends researched the manufacturing and consumer ends of the market and decided to focus on the casual footwear category.

Providing comfortable, trendy, casual shoes in a wide variety of sizes (from size 4 to 13) is 3 Footwear’s USP – and it has made their shoes popular from Karachi all the way to KP, despite the fact that they mainly sell through Facebook, Daraz.pk, and recently they have also started stocking at the multi-brand store J’adore Pret in Karachi.

Throughout the process of building their business, Isa, Naheed and Magsi have been very keen on R&D and Isa calls this the “backbone of the business.” The trio develops up to 18 designs every season and look at Pantone colours and the themes chosen by established brands such as Khaadi for their design inspiration. They also pay a great deal of attention on stress testing their shoes by soaking them in water, wearing them day in and out or even scratching out the embellishments to ensure that the final product is as durable as it is beautiful. According to Isa, “we test and establish our own quality standards because no one knows our designs better than we do.”

By doing so, 3 Footwear has been able to shatter some of the myths perpetrated by large shoe makers in their bid to attract customers. For example, says Magsi “a well-known brand had customers excited about a bright pink, pure leather shoe, but the fact is that a bright pink colour can never be manufactured in pure leather – pure leather has a few basic colour tones only.”

Customers have responded well to this sense of thoroughness that the trio bring to their business and from selling 250 pairs of shoes in 2011, 3 Footwear are now selling 2,500 pairs and are hoping to develop an even greater understanding of their target audience in the future – an audience that includes every woman on-the-go, from the university student to the professional woman. Although 3 Footwear started with flat shoes, they have recently added pumps to their portfolio under the sub-brand Meraki. There are plans to expand even further although the partners remain focused on the fact that comfort should be the hallmark of every design they produce.

Sulafah
Amal Ashoor was in her last semester of BBA-MIS when her father, who was in real estate, asked for her help with a failing side venture – a women’s footwear business. As it turned out, her father’s partners were not very keen about taking ideas from a young student and therefore the father and daughter duo decided to leave the partnership and Ashoor was given the responsibility of sorting the process and salvaging as much as she could from the business. With this salvaged capital, Ashoor set out to establish her own brand – Sulafah – in 2011.

By her own admission she had never been “a shoe-person” and so she began her journey by reading about and observing the women’s footwear market. Although Ashoor was brought up in a home where buying a new pair of shoes to match every outfit was not par for the course, her target market had those tendencies. Keen on making her products available to a wide cross section of women, Ashoor decided to price her shoes between Rs 1,100 and 5,500 and designed them accordingly. This focus on a mass audience paid rich dividends as her sales (two physical stores and via Facebook) are now at a minimum of 1,500 pairs per month. Despite the growth, Ashoor feels that her range doesn’t carry enough depth within the different product lines, be they formal wear, flats, wedges or padded sandals, and she hopes to rectify this in the future, despite the challenges. As she points out “footwear requires a huge capital injection to support material storage, warehousing and transportation.”

Keeping these limitations in mind, Ashoor focuses mainly on bringing out designs quickly with at least five design cycles per season and 50 pairs of shoes per design. She also chooses her promotional channels wisely and with focus – such as a shoot in She magazine, an appearance on Sanam Jung’s morning show and plenty of posts on her Facebook page. She is also planning to open her third store at Dolmen Mall Karachi in 2016, after which she hopes her brand will become more of a household name in the city.