Entrepreneur You: From Thrifting to Exotiq, Ali Ajmal on E-Commerce Growth, Funding, and Staying Relevant

So it's quite a very different story.

So all my teenager, I thought that I'm a job minded person.

I cannot be an entrepreneur.

I can't be my own boss because I was used to following the books, but abiding by the policies and being in such mindset that I need someone to give me directions.

It was not until I started a venture with my friend and she kind of, she had a thrift store basically.

And we used to go and buy stuff from thrift shop and we used to fix those things, clothes, and we used to sell them online.

And then that's when I realized that I do have this kind of entrepreneurial spark.

And then I started doing my research on e-commerce, Shopify, meta ads, and then I launched my own brand, Exotique.

And I was able to sell 400 products within the month of my launch.

Yeah.

And after that, after the first glorious month, how did it go?

So my story is quite different from others.

So I got a huge response during my initial stage of launch because I was telling an octopus plushie.

So it was very new to my area.

So I had a huge bunch of orders and it was COVID time.

So everyone was shopping online.

So it added to my benefit.

So, but after six months, I started to see that orders have started declining.

That's when that was a real challenge because I didn't face seeing a decline in my orders at all.

So I didn't know what to do.

And then I realized that innovation is necessary.

I need to maybe think of new product range.

Maybe I need to revisit my marketing strategy.

Maybe I need to work on my pricing strategy.

So that was a shocker for me after quite a successful start to see my Audience die, interest of my audience die, but I was able to overcome it.