- Khimerz
Online Marketing Heroes: Interviews with 25 Successful Online Marketing Gurus is a famous book by Michael Miller who is the best-selling writer who has focused his books on business and online marketing has quoted Lauren Freedom of the e-tailing group, inc.
“E-commerce is an evolution. You don’t have to get everything right immediately; you can learn from it.”
Online selling is becoming a popular business in Pakistan as well. In this post, I am introducing a young entrepreneur Mohammad Ali Patel who owns an online selling business by the name of Khimerz. The online store offers fashion products such as foot ware, fabric, stitched dresses, dressing accessories, bridal dresses, garments for kids, cosmetics, artificial jewelry and home décor products.
Ali belongs to Memon community that is known for high business acumen. His acumen and technology education helped him in entering into entrepreneurial career. “In my early days, friends used to come to me for career advice. I not only helped others, but also applied the same on my career” says Ali.
In his views, “entrepreneurship is a tough work, because as an entrepreneur, one needs to match desires of your customers at all the time. This is challenging, and sometime impossible! But that is the beauty of being an entrepreneur, it keeps you on your toes all the time.”
Initial challenges for Ali was to prepare a long term business plan basically converting his ideas in to real business, covering risks and analyzing the market. He is still at the learning curve, but for him success is a combination of luck and hard work with commitment and determination.
Ali’s small business was started with hardly any investment. He developed the website, contacted various suppliers and got fourteen interested in working with him. Extensive use of social media was the key marketing tool. Khimez now has 4200 Facebook fan base which is growing at about 10% every month. He also uses blogging and adverts both on social media and magazines for attracting customers.
Kimez marketing strategy focuses at women. The company has found this segment more receptive to online buying in Pakistan. Ali says “entrepreneurial success largely depends on focusing at the right market, development of a practical marketing strategy and active communication with customers.”
While discussing key challenges, Ali said that the non availability of payment gateway is one of the biggest challenges for ecommerce in the country. In his views, This segment will grow exponentially if government encourage an international payment gateway to start operating in the country.
My future vision is to build Khimez as one of the top online marketing brand in Pakistan and then go for franchising – Mohammad Ali Patel