From a porter to a renowned fashion designer, Kiwi Indian Rakesh Jaiswal's story of making his mark in the New Zealand's clothing market is nothing short of a story of courage, perseverance and hard work. Rakesh owns the fashion label Jaiss Fashion Ltd. and runs a showroom with the same name in the famous market of Onehunga.
Rakesh came to New Zealand at a time when a majority of young Indians were choosing business or IT studies, but he decided to pursue fashion designing and started his journey in this industry by designing clothes for his friends at almost no cost.
Rakesh's interest in fashion takes him back to the year 1998 when he had just completed his schooling and had taken designing merely as a hobby. His family's start-up business of designing stoles (scarves) instantly became a super hit in the European countries, and the business skyrocketed. Manufacturing stoles was his first turning point for it took him to the very first concept of manufacturing fabric, producing home furnishing fabrics in handloom and power loom in Kolkata.
This gave Rakesh a new perspective in the cloth-making industry, and he travelled to several places in India to research and learned about this art of making clothes.
"I studied at a Fashion School in North India the very basics of fabric making- be it handloom or power loom, choosing different combinations of colours of threads, stain removing, fabric smoothing, polishing and cloth-making – it involves tons of other factors as well," Rakesh says.
His home companies' scarves carved a massive market in the United States, Europe, Canada and thus allowed him to work with several international clothing brands designing and manufacturing for them.
"At one point in time the brand Zara loved our designs and fabric layout, and I designed orders of different clothes for Zara as well," Rakesh added.
Rakesh with his efforts and work experience became a powerhouse of knowledge and planned to pursue full-time studies and career in fashion designing. He walked into several education summits in the city that landed him a scholarship at Design & Arts College of New Zealand.
Rakesh pursued a six-month scholarship in designing at D&A followed by a two-year course learning more about different clothing. With no immediate luck in getting a job in the fashion world, Rakesh started working at a hotel as a porter and then slowly progressed to become hotel's night manager.
Rakesh's commitment to his work at the hotel did not deter him from putting a considerable amount of his time to his love for designing. He started designing suits for his friends and colleagues that through word of mouth got him immense attention.
Rakesh, to take the next big step after his residency, which luckily arrived just before the massive earthquake in Christchurch, moved to Auckland and took up the same job at the newly established Sudima Hotel.
He spent his nights as duty manager at the hotel and worked during the day meeting prospective clients designing suits for them from his rented home. This gave him a kickstart in establishing his company Jaiss Fashion Limited, working from home, designing and taking orders and getting them tailored at his business in Kolkata in India. With this venture, Rakesh opened a workshop and factory in Kolkata, India with the help of his family and close friend Shahid Iqbal, who he considers backbone of the enterprise.
Jaiss' first breakthrough in Auckland came through online portal GrabOne and Groupon, which gave him more than a hundred orders on the first day of listing.
"Jaiss' first listing went live at midnight, and I waited till 6 a.m. only to see one order. I then slept off and woke up at midday and saw 81 missed calls on my phone. I checked online and had 100 plus orders for suits which were so overwhelming that I had to update 'sold out' to cope with the orders," Rakesh recollected.
Rakesh's hard work and vision helped him to establish his first store in Onehunga, but that did not come without a string of new struggles and challenges. Rakesh made his foray into a retail store that challenged the market norms and already established businesses with better service, pricing, clothing, designing and eventually becoming one of the most sought-after stores for wedding dresses.
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Rakesh explains why designing and tailoring, especially suits and wedding dresses is sheer creativity and immense precision.
More in the next issue.
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