We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sapna Raj a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Sapna, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

So I used to organise fashion exhibitions in India. My last show due to very high temperature turned out really bad. no one showed up so all the exhibitors started fighting with me for refund . I was young and it was very difficult for me to handle that situation but some of the designers were kind and they persuaded everyone to calm down . Later that evening they joined me for dinner . while having dinner they persuaded me to be a designer myself because they liked my sense of style. So I started without knowing anything about fashion . I started with one local tailor and made 40 pieces . Now I participated in one fashion exhibition , wherein Organiser was one of my previous exhibitors , so I didn’t charge her for her last exhibition , I asked her to give booth for free, she agreed . I was sold out in that exhibition and I started my first store from that money.

Sapna, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

So when I started in India in 2014 , we started with Indian clothing where Indian clients loved colors we came up with only White Collection for Indian wear . that was something everyone wanted but options were limited in subtle colours. We were doing good in India , many Bollywood celebrities wore our clothing. But in covid we almost lost all our business. I was feeling very anxious and I also started to feel dissatisfied in my work as I never wanted to do Indian wear because I myself always liked lose and comfortable clothes . I knew if I start this in my city , it will never work. so I made hard decision of leaving India. I always liked US as my market as I studied and interned in Newyork but ofcourse I can not move to US because of work visa , so I decided to come to Istanbul Turkey where White Canvas Earth was born. I left my Indian business to assistant designer . I took one small studio in Istanbul in middle of covid , my true calling for anti-fit , sustainable and natural fashion started great. We have 2 stores in Istanbul now . Soon in September we will have our third store. We are in multiple stores in US and Europe. we were also working with Madewell in US. so yes its been 3 years in Istanbul so far .

Do you have any stories of times when you almost missed payroll or any other near death experiences for your business?

Yes as I mentioned earlier in Covid we almost lost our business. I had to pay my team even though India was in Curfew lockdown . So I started learning trading on youtube. After Youtube I spoke to one of my banks agents he started helping me where to invest . So from that money I used to pay my employees. When I moved to Turkey I had enough money to build my business from scratch after 7 years in India. Initially in Turkey as well I struggled with Covid . No tourist no sales but somehow I started stitching small cushion covers and bags myself and started selling them for very low price to make my 1st collection and survive in Covid.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I am still in unlearning process. As a designer or as a person I always believed to have a business which pay me good salary and good lifestyle . But somehow in my way I realised that I am spending lot of money and hardly saving for bad days of business. I have to unlearn this and treat this as proper business. Since last year I finally started doing this in a proper way .

Contact Info:

• Website: www.whitecanvasearth.com
• Instagram: white_canvas_earth
• Facebook: White Canvas Earth
• Linkedin: White Canvas Earth
• Other: Pinterest : White Canvas Earth

Image Credits
Image : kalaraksha India , Sile Organisation