WOMAD — SME Case Study (UAE)

Womad is a clothing brand specifically in providing modest wear. Womad is a portmanteau for women and nomads and was established Feb. 21, 2021, located in Sharjah, UAE. Womad is a modest clothing line that focuses on combining the traditional wear of the past nomadic Emirati womads with the identity of the modern womad, therefore, its concept comes from nomadic Emirati ancestors. It also tries to target a wide range of sizes and offer affordable prices for high end qualities so that every woman can be a part of the womad experience.

Womad’s main priority is the satisfaction of its customers and the quality of products. It’s very keen on providing high end qualities, which requires it to WOMAD import various fabrics from India, China, and Korea.

Moreover, it focuses on providing exquisite finishing to pieces and great attention to details, which in return, builds a relationship with customers. In addition, it calls every woman a womad as almost every woman comes from a nomadic history, regardless of the geography.

Its mission is to provide what’s missing in the market in terms of prices, quality, sizes, and at the same time, the identity of the modern woman can be found within the pieces. In other words, it aims to make every woman feel beautiful and empowered by the traditional abayas with a modern touch by providing high end modest wear, in terms of quality, with affordable prices.

Vision There are many abaya lines who are competing with each other and succeeding with their competitiveness on the field of abaya, and what makes Womad different is it has a very clear vision that fits its production ability and image to be a market leader with delivering high quality fabric and new concepts, which makes every woman proud. It aims to target all womads in the world so it wants to introduce its traditional wear to the world.

Organizational Structure

Owners Wafa Mazoun Accounting Coordinator Tailor Purchasing Photographer Branding Graphic Designer Figure 1: Womad’s Organizational Structure As the figure above shows, the organizational structure consists of the founders of Womad and below them, three different sections. One of them is accounting, which handles all the budgets, cost, and payments. Then comes the main and important person, the tailor who tailored the designs and makes sure to deliver the design exactly as they want it to be fit to the customers. Then we have the coordinator, who coordinates with customers and all other people and set appointments, attends to calls and meetings sometimes on behalf of the owners.

Then comes purchasing and branding, which takes care of the brand name, advertisements and promotion. The photographer films and takes pictures of models and we focus on having a very professional photographer and last not least, a graphic designer who edits all pictures and tells the importance of proper typography in a design.

Womad Founder The founders of Womad are Mazoun Al Ali and Wafa Al Shamsi. Ali is 24-years-old and she studies chemical engineering at the University of Seren in UK and she always wants to find her own identity and it’s very important to share it with other people and that was the birth of Womad. The second founder is Shams. She is 25-years-old and she completed a high school diploma and more than seven years’ experience in marketing. She is a banker and people person and developed a lot of interpersonal skills as she is a very creative person in her element, so banking helped her to understand people through customer service, so she knows exactly what people want and finds all the hidden parts of the ideology that comes with people. There are two main founders I mentioned earlier, and they help the team of Womad, which was very crucial in the beginning of the project, such as investors were privileged to have to start the business, as well as everything else that brought the idea to life, including the branding, photography, and models, so everything that was in their head was brought to life because of the team that they have, which consists of seven members.

Womad Response to Covid-19 It started planning and finding suppliers before COVID.

It was in January 2020 when the idea was birthed into action and it was a lot easier before COVID, due to the fact that imports of the fabric from different countries was a lot easier and much more reliable in terms of bulk shopping. It faced a huge impact and a huge issue after COVID, so the biggest restructure is the amount of availability of every fabric after COVID because a lot of importing and exporting issues arise, with the fabrics coming between three main countries, including India, China, and Korea. That’s the biggest issue that it faced during COVID. As we know, flights were stopped at that time and a lot of airports were temporarily closed, so there was difficulty in finding models and it needed to make sure that they did the COVID test before they met, as well as for us too. Also when it was a lockdown, the company can’t move easily during that time when it comes time to meet the tailor and explain to him how he needs to design and make every single abaya in a proper way, so those difficulties affect the plan and restructure.

The company studies the market well and the range for prices for any abayas and modest wear that ranged between 250 dirhams up to 400 dirhams. It didn’t have the proper finishing or the fabric quality that it was looking for and at the same time, if it did have those features, it did not fit the identity it was looking for so it based its products in the terms of the highest level of

quality of fabrics such as

¡ 100% satin ¡ No polyester in any of the fabric ¡ Everything is 100% silk ¡ For the next collection, it will provide 100% lennon It based the pricing so that for each abaya is a profit margin, low in terms of getting a profit, and cutting cost. The idea is not getting money out of the pieces it is actually helping people find their journeys with the identity of themselves as they also used a 100% sustainable packaging in terms of no usage of plastic, so every single piece of the packaging is 100% recyclable so it focused on delivering the best quality but delivering it in the best way to not harm the planet.

Figure 2-4: Womad Promotional Photos

The business strategy is to target many women from the ages of 17-30. Ages other than that are welcome to buy from Womad and it targeting them with pricing and the modern intake of sustainable approach, so the strategy would be low profit margin, which creates low pricing of each abaya and the sustainable approach to the packaging, in which all of the pieces are recyclable and nothing is harmful to the planet. What made them both start this business was that they couldn’t afford getting abayas every month with good quality and good price.

It is either price and bad quality or low price and poor quality, so they studied every single feature in terms of product, price, customer preferences, and what the problems are that need to be solved in the market when it comes to abayas. People wear what makes them unique and different from other abayas brands and through those processes that will lead it to expand more and earn more customers and have a very good relationship with them.

The most important one in operational strategy would be deadlines. The company is very keen on deadlines and provides realistic deadlines for operations, given the fact that it is functioning under COVID19 circumstances and so a lot of new laws are interchangeable and nothing is stable in terms of laws, which the company takes into consideration.

Getting the right piece of fabric.

Consistent with the tailor, sizes and finishing with each and every piece.

Trying to be consistent by staying with one supplier that provide them the highest qualities in the given time that it is looking for.

The planning for each size means it is doing a lot of trials and it is seeing what the market is responding to and curating to that demand.

Being a relatively new player in the local market, the important objective was to establish the company’s brand among the customers and hence, there was a need for a strong sales and marketing team. This is the densest part of all strategies because the company is based online and is very keen in maximizing the marketing strategy.

¡ It takes advantage of options provided at this day and age for business development by using the power of social media such as the algorithms of Instagram and curating that science by using certain features provided by the app like promotional posts.

¡ It uses “two birds with one stone” in the since of sustainability as I mentioned earlier, it is using a sustainable approach for the packaging.

¡ It uses real, relatable women as the faces of Womad because by that, it would be fit to feel comfortable looking at the page and relating to the page in order for you to go and click and buy.

Business Challenge

The following are challenges in the abayas industry

¡ One of the biggest challenges that Womad faces is to find investors to start up the business.

¡ It spends a lot of time looking and searching for a good, loyal supplier or fabric and packaging that understands it and knows what it needs exactly.

¡ It faced issues and difficulties in getting the trade license and mentioned that for people who want to start up a business, it’s better for them to know what they might face and to be ready for any troubles and ready to solve.

¡ It faced problems in opening a bank account.

The bank law said if you want to have a business account, you have to have a minimum balance in the account not less than 50k, so it couldn’t open a bank account.

¡ It faced an issue during COVID-19 with finding a supplier who would give it bulk fabric and at the same time, be consistent with keeping and providing that same exact fabric.

¡ There is always a way for everything and by being consistent, you can reach what you want.

¡ Keep pushing yourself and remind yourself that you can do it.

¡ Insist and search for Plan B.

¡ As I mentioned earlier, when facing an issue in finding honest and consistent suppliers, talk to them, which might fit their needs and develop a trust bond.

Successful Best Practices

¡ Once the collection is out on Instagram, people support and love the work.

¡ Our persistence and hard work on the fabric and sizes with small details makes customers satisfied while they wear and order from us.

¡ Expansion in delivery, before was only in Sharjah and Dubai, but now we do delivery to the Northern Emirates.

¡ Our innovation and the idea that we came up with and merge the old with the new.

¡ Consistency.

¡ Expansion of others social media platforms such as Facebook to reach a higher number of audiences.

¡ Looking for a tailor that is honest with us and does the work we want and can deal with him and feel comfortable explaining how to design the abaya and what changes need to be fixed.

¡ Over budgeting the photographer.

¡ Failed promises from fabric suppliers and not providing fabrics on bulk.

¡ Putting sales target on pieces that were too different from the target market.

¡ Failed to get a trade license in the beginning, which affected other work and delayed things.

It is important to note that despite challenging overall situations, tough market conditions during COVID-19, and a lot of troubles and difficulties before the business started, the company is so proud of the result it got and now has its own client and loyal customer who has seen the products, so they trust the company and that means a lot. Also, it has more experience in dealing with marketing and for a more appending approach in branding. It reached a bigger radar in targeted areas as it started receiving inquiries from the Northern UAE (Ras Al-Khaimah, Fujairah) and other GCC countries such as Kuwait.

The things that Womad needs to do and improve in order to gain more success and to be one of the most abayas brand locally and regionally, I will mention them

in the below chart

Increasing the stock of their collection More promotional posts More engagements from followers Pop-up in abaya places such as 1020 avenue W O M A D Figure 5: Recommendations Chart for Womad Lesson Learned ¡ First of all, I learned how to be more confident in myself and I saw that when I started interviewing the owners and asking questions.

¡ I learned that a good case study is when we understand everything about the case.

¡ This case study increases my ability to think and analyze the situation.

¡ I learned how the company deals with the business to reach its goals and succeed.

¡ Despite all the difficulties and challenges that it faced during this pandemic, they didn’t stop it and it kept going until it proved itself in the abaya industry.

¡ I learned no matter what trouble you face, if you keep pushing into your goals and fight for that, in the end, you will be happy with the result after all that hard work.

In conclusion, Womad is still a baby in the making and it hopes to grow to help other women find their journeys and identity with the traditional wear of the UAE, which are mostly abayas and the modest wear that comes under abaya. Womad has an amazing team that delivers products and services in the most proper way and takes care of everything, from the fabric to the packaging.

That’s why Womad gained its customers’ trust and it is working now on new collections to come. It also is looking to expand to the GCC by attending events there and letting everyone know about them. In the end, Womad supports and makes every local and Arabic woman proud of herself. Women can do a lot and they can be successful in all fields.