We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Priyasha Shah a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Priyasha, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?
I think the biggest thing it takes to be successful is resilience and an unwavering belief in oneself. I have seen time and time again in my own personal experiences that the thing that consistently made me successful or achieve any goal was not my intelligence or my network or my physical ability. It was that I knew I could do it if I just kept going and wanted it badly enough.
The first major sign of this in my professional life was when I quit a job because I didn’t get the promotion I deserved. I could have easily stuck around another 6-9 months to show them I can do more, but I was tired of wasting time proving myself to those that didn’t see my value. I gave myself one month to find another job that met all my needs so I moved to a new city and on the 30th day of just grinding, networking, applying and hustling to get the next role of my dreams, I got an offer from a company that really excited me. During those 30 days, I did not think of anything besides what life is going to look like, feel like and be like once I land the role of my dreams, Also during those 30 days, I was getting rejected left and right by so many of the roles I applied to, but it didn’t deter me a single bit. I knew it would work out because I was giving it my all and I was willing to do anything to get there. I think that’s what made me successful.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
My name is Priyasha, and I am the founder and CEO of Sakhya. A little bit about me. I started my professional career after I got my degree in Chemical Engineering with the hopes of getting a really cool job working in building super innovative products for the world. Instead, I found myself working in a plastic water bottle manufacturing plant, on the factory floor. I learned a ton about production, operations and large scale manufacturing, and I actually grew to really love the industry and the work. I enjoyed the constant problem-solving I was doing in order to make processes faster, more efficient, and less wasteful. But that last one, the “less-wasteful” part, was a tough one because I felt as though no matter how much I worked to move the needle on reducing waste, in the grand scheme of things, I was barely making an impact on how much plastic waste continues to be produced as a by-product of a lot of the every day products we consumed.
Fast forward a few years, my passion for sustainability continued to grow and I realized that although I love engineering and problem solving, I am also a creative at heart. I love dancing, I love art, I love fashion and so I started brainstorming. I started dreaming. What if there was a way I could build my own solution to an existing waste problem, where I’d be making a larger sustainable impact in an industry I felt a lot more passionate about, too?
With a passion for fashion and a belief that I could be the one to solve a challenge that existed in my community, my South Asian community, I built Sakhya. Sakhya is not only a resale marketplace for South Asian fashion, it’s on its way to become the hub for truly sustainable and accessible South Asian fashion in the US. This is especially necessary during a time when the world is producing 100 billion garments a year and only about 20% of textiles end up being reused or recycled.
In a culture where attending extravagant weddings and festive events is a very common occurrence throughout the year, shopping for South Asian fashion is unfortunately incredibly expensive, unattainable for many, and most importantly, so wasteful. We are living in a world where, once that traditional garment is worn once or twice, we tend to retire the outfit because “I’ve already been seen in it”, and the outfit sits in our closets for months, if not years. South Asian fashion trends are starting to move just as quickly as western fashion trends, so the habit to over-purchasing, over-consuming, and wearing items only once is becoming a norm.
Sakhya is a platform where people can finally sell their new and pre-loved modern South Asian fashion to buyers all across the US who’d love to rock that latest trend for a fraction of the retail price. We are finally making shopping for ethnic fashion more sustainable and accessible by creating a community where lovers of modern fashion can come together, whether to buy a new outfit for an upcoming event, or sell something they’ve already worn.
What I am most proud of is that we, alongside a few others in the space, are among the first in the South Asian fashion world to be normalizing resale, second-hand and pre-owned fashion in a community where there still tends to be a stigma around it. Through educating our community on the benefits and impacts of re-use and resale, we are seeing the impacts of more conscious shopping and consumer habits in South Asian fashion.
Can you share one of your favorite marketing or sales stories?
As a builder, as an introverted creative, and as a perfectionist, I never enjoyed putting my face out into the world. However, when starting this business I knew that showing the face behind the brand would likely be the best marketing strategy to get people on social media to start watching what we’re building. So one day, my co-founder at the time and I decided to make a very quick and scrappy Instagram reel, our first ever reel with our faces in it, where we showed the world what Sakhya does in a nutshell. It was so impromptu. no makeup, didnt even shower, just woke up and propped our phone on a tripod stand we bought that week, and within an hour, we filmed, edited and posted our first ever piece of marketing content on social media. And within days, we blew up and went viral, accumulating over 5 million views on our reel from people across the world who finally saw what Sakhya was about and through that we got an overwhelming number of inquiries from people interested in selling their pre-owned South Asian clothing. It was the validation I was looking for.
I really love that story because it showed me a lot about how the concept of perfectionism can hold me back from moving quickly and seeing real results. People don’t want to see perfection; they want to see something authentic and relatable. And to be showing the faces behind the Sakhya brand so early on, we were able to capitalize on getting the attention from millions about what our business can do for them.
Any thoughts, advice, or strategies you can share for fostering brand loyalty?
What I love about Sakhya is that is a community first. People love that they are able to shop locally, shop sustainably, and shop from people who have common values. Although our company operates completely digitally, especially because our we were founded during a time when social distancing was the norm in our lifestyles, our live events have really truly helped solidify the community today. I especially love seeing a seller at one of our live events tell me how happy they were to be able to pass on one of their favorite outfits to someone else. Or even a buyer come up to me and say how amazing it was to find an outfit for their sister’s wedding on our site. I noticed all our shared values of admiring our culture and sustainability brought our community together online, and Im really excited to be growing that with more live events.
Contact Info:
- Website: shopsakhya.com
- Instagram: @shopsakhya
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/priyashashah/
Image Credits
Brittany Ting