Case Study - Marketing

by Sudip Mallik

Shahnaz is a small-town girl from West Bengal who had passed out from a fashion design
programme of PMKVY in Rajar Haat, near Kolkata. She was very excited when she found out
that NIESBUD is providing an opportunity to start her up on a business by providing
handholding & facilitation which included a loan to buy her sewing machine. She realized that if
she took a loan she would also need to repay it to get a further loan in future for growing her
business. Although she knew all about design and tailoring of fashion garments, she was not
sure about how to promote and sell the garments. Friends and relatives often came to her to get
their garments designed and tailored as she was really good in her ideas of how to design
something which was traditional but had a modern outlook. If she marketed her garments well,
she may be able to grow her business and make it successful.

One day, her friend came to her and said she wanted to wear something for the upcoming Eid
Festival. It was then that Shahnaz discovered she could use this festival for promoting and
selling customized garments. Well, everyone has a different taste of garment type, style,
colours, and choice of fabric and embroidery. Not all clothes can be bought in readymade stores
can some of these retailers in malls can be really expensive. Her product specialty was satin
fabric based salwaar-kameez with zardozi embroidery. Only, she needed to price the garments
well. Her father Hussain said she must add up all her costs and out a reasonable profit.

Shahnaz decided to name her little place of tailoring shop at home as ‘Shahnaz Creations’ and
put up an attractive signboard. The logo was a simple one. This was what she came to know
was the first step towards ‘branding’. She put her mobile number on her business cards which
were in Bengali and Urdu and asked a friend Ali to design a website for her. On her website she
put her designs and also mentioned the prices. One morning, she asked the newspaper agent if
he would be ready to put flyer inserts in the newspapers. One of the nearby printing presses
suggested that she also paste posters on some walls and put up cloth banners. That night,
Shahnaz spoke with her father and asked him to loan her Rs. 10,000/- for all this type of
promotion activities. Although it was a large amount of money for a poor handloom artisan, her
father gave her the money as he always liked to encourage the progress of girls in the
community.

The marketing which she did was very effective and got her results. She was soon known to
everyone in her community as ‘Shahnaz the Designer’. Her friends who were pursuing their
MBA said it seemed she knew all about the famous 4 Ps – Product, Price, Place and Promotion.
Actually, all she wanted to know was how to reach out to her customers and keep them happy.

Questions & Discussion Points:

a) Can you say how Shahnaz practically did an effective marketing while her friends were studying
about it?
b) How is marketing related to success in doing business?
c) Will Shahnaz now be able to think of taking a loan which she can repay? How will her marketing
plan help?