In this day and age, while fashion has evolved into a thriving industry in Bangladesh, it is often a struggle for parents to look for outfits for their children that complement their own style. When we look around, there are clothing options aplenty for adults, while fashionable kids’ clothing is scarce. In an attempt to change that, and assist parents to let their kids strut in trendsetting outfits, Cotton Graces started their operations. Just a few months since their commencement, they have begun gaining recognition for their innovative designs and smooth customer service online. While the mini models they use contribute to a large portion of their growth, we reached out to them to find out more about their journey so far, and the long way ahead.
Tell us about the brains behind Cotton Graces. Who are the people working behind the scenes?
Cotton Graces consists of a diligent team pursuing our vision of providing high quality and distinctive clothing, ahead of the fashion curve, exclusively for babies and kids all around the country. We primarily aim to provide top tier products with ultimate customer satisfaction and assistance. Our local craftsmen and designers put in their heart and soul to transform a plain piece of fabric into a uniquely beautiful outfit for kids. Our team is led by three ambitious young entrepreneurs who came together solely because of a shared vision and passion, along with unconditional love for kids: Sami Siddique, currently studying at NSU, Dhaka, Nazlee Moyeen currently studying at IUB, Dhaka and Faiyaz Chowdhury currently studying at Brock University, Canada.
When and how did you decide to start Cotton Graces?
Early this year, it all started off as a vision vaguely put down on paper. But the idea was to reduce the inconvenience that parents, especially mothers, go through as they travel through jam-packed traffic for hours and browse through numerous amounts of clothing just to purchase the right garment for their kids. Additionally, we always understood the value of time and effort in a mother's day to day agenda.
We aimed to ease their lives a tad bit by making original designed apparels incredibly accessible, delivering at the doorsteps of our customers directly through our website, social media platforms, and extremely responsive customer service. Moreover, we have always lacked stylish clothing for kids that are readily available in Bangladesh. Either they are too dull or too heavy. There is hardly anything available for day to day wear. For example, we have the likes of Gentle Park and Ecstacy for adults, but nothing exclusively for the little ones. Eventually, we realized the gap and aimed to make Cotton Graces the finest baby clothing line in Bangladesh, where we’d provide trendy clothing exclusively for children. We believe children deserve to dress as well as adults. Eventually, our first customer's sheer appreciation towards our brand was the moment when we knew for sure that Cotton Graces is what we wanted to pursue in our professional career.
What has been your primary approach in terms of making your brand known? How has the feedback been so far?
Everyone has heard that first impressions last a lifetime; however, as we know with technological development, brands like us get the opportunity to make a good first impression in the digital world. Hence, we aimed to promote the adorably joyous lifestyle of kids through well crafted digital marketing and video marketing communication. We genuinely believe the concept ‘customers are always right’. We strongly believe in the idea that good behaviour is always remembered. Of course, we want our quality and design to speak for itself. We do believe we provide the highest quality at an affordable price. Therefore, we are not afraid to provide cash on delivery and a seven day money back guarantee to the customers. We are nothing but grateful for the response that we have received from our customers, whom we refer to as the ‘Cotton Graces family’. By God's grace, our second season, during the month of Ramadan, was sold out in 16 days, and we thank our incredibly loyal customers and our committed team for their love and efforts towards our vision.
What age range do you produce clothes for?
We initially started by producing outfits for newborns to five year olds, both boys and girls. However, because of our loyal customers and an incredibly dedicated team, we were able to expand to clothing for kids up to eight years of age for both boys and girls.
Do you design the clothes yourselves? Where are these manufactured?
Our designs are all done by our designing team, carefully crafted, with extensive attention to detail and quality. Each design is then made with some of the most comprehensive tailoring and stitching put together by our devoted craftsmen in our own little warehouse, simultaneously making sure that every style produced is an artwork in itself made by us, for us.
What are your plans with your brand? How do you want it to be represented?
Firstly, it has been a privilege to be serving our customers; they are the secret to our consistent hard work and motivation. We believe we have the potential to be the go-to shop for parents, to fulfill our ultimate vision. We want to continue focusing on making a mother's shopping experience as delightful and convenient as possible. We are working on a program in which parents will be able to collaborate with us, as we take their vision of an outfit and transform their imagination into a physical product. We are working day after day to bring our consumers the most appealing designs in sizes most businesses cannot offer. In the long run, through our customers’ love and support, we hope to open up an outlet of our own in a few years. We aim to make Cotton Graces the face of kids’ fashion, not only through our business turnovers, but primarily through our customer service and brand identity. Also, we don’t only want to be known as a clothing company to the parents; rather, we want to be known as the most-trustworthy shopping companion for parents.