With more young people than ever before setting up in business on their own, many are turning to the internet to share their experiences and grow.
Priyanka Saini was 18 years old when she started working. She took small steps to reach a level where she could work on her business idea. She provided Digital Marketing services to many hospitality brands.
Later, she was joined by Mohd. Shariq and together they created “Weirdos” initially a Digital Marketing provider and eventually turned into a clothing brand weirdo.in.
Their social media pages are quite different, often filled with quotes and poetry, to which Priyanka says “through them, the audience feels connected to the brand name in a way”.
While launching the clothing line, they aimed to sell 10 t-shirts in a month, they ended up selling much more!
Watch this young entrepreneurial duo talk about their inspiring journey, social media promotions and running two different ideas simultaneously and earning profits in both!
Nikita-My first question to you is that you’re just 22 years old – Please walk me through your background. How did you come up with the idea and what’s your Education qualification?
Priyanka it’s not even 22, when I started I was just 18. Right after my 12th, I was unsure about what career path I should choose and ended up for Bachelors’s in computer science. Simultaneously I kept myself engaged in different activities and started working and took up a few internships. Those internships turned into potential clients. The internships were in Content writing and Social Media Marketing.
Nikita- What were your expectations when you started?
Priyanka: The expectation or motivation initially was not to get too big. But to get independent, so I could do things on my own. I wanted to pay for my classes that I was taking like gymnastics. So I wanted those expenses to be covered by taking up internships.
Nikita- Welcome Shariq, my question to you is, how did you two meet and how did you collaborate?
Shariq: I was inspired by Priyanka’s work in college. She was doing multiple internships and getting fit, I was at that time!
Nikita: So, were you both classmates?
Shariq: yeah.
Priyanka: So in the first year, we sort of merged.
Shariq: I was more into the technical stuff. I thought I was doing good and I will find a job after B.Tech. But then I saw her, taking care of her expenses and I was living off my father’s money.
Nikita: So that’s when you came up with the idea of Weirdos. Tell me about the name.
Priyanka: I was called a weirdo.
Shariq: She used to dress very differently and was not personality conscious at all.
Priyanka: So, I was looking for Domain names and did not get any. This sort of came in my mind, I searched for it, it was available and we took it.
Nikita: As I know, it’s a clothing brand but tell me more about the products and services.
Priyanka: The clothing brand is something that came later. How it started- we were offering Digital marketing Services, more in the hospitality industry. Some of them are- Alpina Hotels, Social Street Cafe, Nagpal Jewellers, Detailing Skull, The Vintage Hotels and many more.
So besides that, we were building an audience that could connect to the brand more, because this is something that is service-based and people don’t actually like reading about. So we had our Instagram page for Weirdos wherein we started publishing poetry and quotes page on Instagram.
Nikita: So initially the idea was that you provide Digital Marketing Services to Clients and later on you came up with the clothing brand. So How is that doing?
Priyanka: We have like 8k followers on Instagram and we wanted to check if the people that are connected to us would buy something from us or not. That was the time we knew we can launch something for our people. So we came up with the t-shirts range that is quirky and are trying to convert all niches, interest areas to design for.
But the whole idea and its launch and the progress indeed was a hypothesis. We needed to have set a goal and outperform that to keep the flow going.
The initial target was to sell 10 t-shirts within 30 days without any investment in ads or human resources with solely the audience we already had. And 15-20 went into the development of the website post that we could let people know that we have come up with a product range.
So it was just 10 days now post the launch and we did make 13 sales.
Now now we knew we are in the right direction and all we need to do is explore new ways to evolve.
Nikita- How is Instagram helping you out in terms of Digital Marketing Services and selling out the clothing?
Priyanka: There are two segments that we work on. It’s not that everything is online. Firstly it was a Digital Marketing website now it’s pure e-commerce. The first goal of the 10 sales was purely organic. Out idea was more about touching the strings of the hearts of people so that when they are connected, we can sell the product.
Nikita: Talk about Pinterest?
Priyanka: I love the platform a lot of people are connected to the platform too, the sole idea behind Pinterest too is the same as Instagram but an add on is that it helps us drive organic traffic on the website, which Instagram doesn’t allow us for now.
Nikita Talk about blogs, how do they help?
Priyanka: Weirdo is solely around touching the string to people’s heart and it will always be so the blog section also has poetry and will talk more about styling tips, start-up tips, and a few marketing tips down the line.
Because we do not want to lose the essence of anything that we are into. We wish to project a real-time picture of what we are to the people connected with us.
Nikita: Plans? What do you target in the future?
Shariq: Growing our collection for every need, from kids section to wedding collection. From jeans to lehnga to suits and maternity dresses. Like I told you we want the customer to feel at ease while we do the rest for them.
Nikita: What is your message for all the young aspirants who want to start something on their own?
Priyanka: Digital Marketing courses are good, but besides that I want people to be connected with some internships or real-time work as well. Like I started pretty early and did multiple internships and that’s how I learned.
Shariq: Even today, we face many challenges like website going down, we research and fix it on our own. Continuous learning is important.
Nikita: A message for all the women out there, who aspire to achieve something big in life?
Priyanka: You’ve got it in you and just go for it. Because there were times when I doubted myself if this is the right path. My passion was to develop something that would connect to people as much as possible. So if you have a passion just go for it. It’s not always about the money, it’s about happiness and we are pretty happy.
