It had been a month since Hari Mishra and Ankit Rajput started living with their friends, sleeping on floors, and eating one meal a day. Hari and Ankit’s business had run out of money. The entrepreneurs had started a bootstrapped custom clothing brand and design studio Pop tailor in Mumbai in 2016.
But they exhausted their funds, amounting to Rs 25 lakh, in less than a year. They struggled to convert customers over to their clothing design studio due to lengthy purchase cycles. Two out of four partners exited the business, leaving Hari and Ankit to deal with its remains. Hari and Ankit packed their bags and left the city of dreams.
Making their way towards Delhi, they hoped for a fresh start. Until they figured things out, they decided to stay with some friends and cut their expenses. But they knew they couldn’t depend on their friends for too long. They couldn’t let this phase last more than a month.
From B2C to B2B During this difficult phase, Hari and Ankit noticed startups, hotels, and large corporations face challenges in sourcing uniforms and other items of clothing for their employees and runners.
Hari and Ankit spent their days visiting textile markets, meeting suppliers for sourcing high-quality materials, and hunting for customers. To save money, they did all the work such as accounting, quality inspection, warehousing, loading and unloading, and transportation. Their first breakthrough came when OYO placed an order for 70 t-shirts. Scaling up Hari and Ankit executed the OYO order under a new brand name: theStyleWorx.
The brand, under their Gurugram-based parent company Nona Lifestyle, represented their pivot to B2C. It started offering basic quality workwear (with t-shirts starting from Rs 150 per piece) and also gave free design support to customers so that they could maximize their brand reach through uniforms worn by employees.
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