We recently connected with Nidhi Shah and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Nidhi thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

After getting Rejections in few 9-5 Jobs. I have started my business for survival. I have never thought to run it for longer time. My friends always loved my jewellry and Styling. They always asked me to get the Jewellry or Earrings i wear . So, i have started ordering for them in bulk. But slowly it became business. I started this very low scale. And my best USP was i was keeping my margin low in items so everyone can afford it. Thats how it started ARNI Fashion.

Nidhi , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

So, I have done my Masters in Business Administration with Marketing. Back in india I have worked as a Sales and Marketing manager for almost decades. When i moved in USA 2016, i tried to work with couple of Companies in admin and Desk jobs . But, it never gave me excitement because I am People oriented person. I like to talk to people, i like to sell items because i am so good at it.

But, because of Language barriers and My personal commitments i could not find perfect job of my interest. But, I did not give up. I keep on telling my self that “Its ok, i got it.” i started pushing my self to learn American business knowledge, i started reading about it. Because of i was marketing person. I knew how to market my products on Social media. I created Facebook and Instagram Page and Started posting it in Different social groups. I started meeting new people, started taking participate in local pop – up events. In starting i loose so much money because i was not knowing who are my really Target audience and my biggest competition was “PepeRazzi” who was already selling $5 jewellry so people were not trusting buying from foreigner. I still remember in some pop up shows we did not earn minimum break evens. But, again I did not loose hope, i did lot of market research and Analysis for target audience.

When Pandemic Hit in 2020 we started doing Facebook Live shows and Whole south asian community from USA came forward and my friends and family started referring people to buy online. It was a trend in 2020-2021 to buy online. And because of my Unique designs of gold plating and silver plating products With Reasonable prices helped me to grow my business.

My family supported me through out right from the Sales lives to Packaging orders. And i decided that i will pursue my career in “Being my own Boss”. Well, it was not easy to deal with Different humans because its quite impossible task to fulfill everyone’s wishes and their choices. But, i have decided to focus more on “Customer Services” not on “Profit making”. As , my experience really taught me that Any company is Exists because of their “Customers”. People remember How you treat them, how you serve them. How quick you resolve issues .

I gave my time, blood and sweat to focus on customer services. Couple of incidents happens when customers had issues with Damage items, Quality of jewellry we consider their complaints and gave replacements. Some times i added from my own pocket too. But i make sure i dont loose my single customers. And thats why we do have 80% ratio of Repeat customers who still buys from us since 2019.

Trust, Honesty and Integrity thats what defines ARNI Fashion. If you ask me why should you buy from us, My answer is Because “Your money will be safe with us, you will get more what you pay for”. And, we still continue
With this motto, we treat every customers in same way, whether you buy $20 of item or $200. No favoritism , no judgements and no biased.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

So, because of my Marketing background i have learnt many skills of social media marketing. If you are starting your new business you make sure you atleast post “One Post” every day. Try to create Unique contents, use some unique Hashtags, there are Social media Public groups where you can do more and more sharing of your Posts. Facebook has some awesome Paid marketing tools also they have free marketing tools . Research on it, take some online lessons. Google it, youtube it. I would say Dont miss posting Single story or Single post. You can schedule posts in advance too. Do regular FB lives, instagram lives. There is no secret for Social media Marketing. We did follow all of it and reached upto 16k followers in Facebook page and 11k followers in instagram after 2019. You can also achieve that.

Persistent is the Key. Dont Give up. Even if you have 500 followers or 5 M followers.

Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.

We have our own Manufacturing Units in Jaipur and Mumbai city in india. When i started this business my family played huge role to support me for inventory and Products. We had family friends in india who are already in similar business and encouraged me to pursue more. They are doing Kundan Jewellry Manufacturing since decades. And started giving me Products on smaller scales. We brought revolution in Imitation market in usa to bring High quality Gold plated Jewellry in pocket friendly prices.

My customers loved my prices and quality, but again we faced issues here also. Its a huge investment when you manufacture products, also you need to make items in bulk. You cant have different variety because of lack of resources. And Fashion changes every 3 months.

So, that happened to us we loose so many trendsetter customers. because in market there are competitions who always bring items ahead of us while we are stuck producing items. And lack of funding i could not invest more in other vendors on larger scale. In 2021-2022 we faced many challenges financially as company.

So, we decided to produce in smaller scales and working with other wholesalers too so, my customer get more varieties. And My customers really liked the idea. Honestly its hard to keeping up interests for anyone in same types of Products for long time. But We always made sure to give Them lucrative Rewards, gift cards, Discounts and offers time to time so they dont go anywhere.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.arnifashion-clt.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/arnifashionclt
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pg/Arnifashion/posts/

Image Credits
Nidhi