Jaipur never misses to amaze its visitors with its amazing forts and the lifestyle shared among its million inhabitants. It’s known as pink city to the world, however anyone who has been a witness to the teeming city, wouldn’t deny that the colourful exuberance it showcases is any less, owed to its crafty artisans, which continue to throng the city with their beautifully created handloom and handicrafts. It’s during one such journey one gets inspired, rarely do people believe that these handicrafts can be made available to a much larger population leveraging the power of internet, which more than anything, create a sustainable livelihood for these artisans.
Dhruv & Kaushal Goyal, founders at ExclusiveLane were both bit by the entrepreneur bug early in life. Brainstorming from one idea to another, the duo though that it’s best they pursue their passion for art (also awestruck by handicrafts & cultural diversity of the pink city, aka Jaipur on their road trip) by providing a platform to artisans to sell their unique handmade products nationally & internationally. That’s how the journey of a 3-year-old home decor start-up & handicrafts came into existence. Since then the bosses have lost all religion and beliefs and started working towards bringing a social change in the life of these artisans.
ExclusiveLane.com, as the name suggests believes in only one code, “Exclusivity”. It calls itself an online home decor & handicrafts store born out love and passion for unique goods produced in India. From working with SME’s, artisans to designers it handpicks most of the unique designs. In some cases, it designs its own products (get manufactured by artisans) and get their exclusive right in the online space. Giving a personal touch to customers in this virtual world is another thing that they do, as they say, “hatke”.
It offers anything that is handmade or anything that a person makes with a vision. From decor to furniture & yet to launch furnishing it has a wide variety of products ranging from lamps, vases, clocks, wall decors, trays, cutlery, studio pottery, tea lights and much more.
Model of working
ExclusiveLane works on a mixed model, the private label or the inventory model, that keeps the stock of the products that they sell on different platforms. This model is more tended towards helping small-scale artisans to have a sustainable livelihood.
“These artisans have no knowledge about selling online and were missing on a great opportunity. To overcome the challenges of the internet, we provide them with storage space, design input, fantastic packaging procedure and take up their online sales challenge”, says Dhruv.
The recently started marketplace model looks more at how we are trying to create a unique online store of handmade and handcrafted products by designers, NGO’s etc. The marketplace model will soon come under the “Exclusive” class where we will be collaborating with designers for exclusive products.
ExclusiveLane takes pride in and believes that—
-Each and every product has an art (artistic story) behind it
-All the products are carefully examined for handpicked designs
-Exclusive range of products that are handmade and handcrafted
-Excellent quality & continues supply of the product which was not possible in case of handicrafts as there is no standardisation
-Building a self-sustainable model by having a strong brand reputation with/within different marketplaces
-Providing an artisan friendly platform where all his online selling hassles are eradicated and selling his products nationally and internationally becomes their job.
Challenges faced by the team
Kaushal Goyal, Co-founder, ExclusiveLane, puts it as,” When we started out there were challenges like getting into an exclusive tie-up with vendors, managing supply chain, setting up processes, managing online sales challenges, branding and more.”
Dhruv, founder, ExclusiveLane, re-affirms that though they had found a newer market making themselves visible wasn’t an easy game, “We always had a capital constraint since we were young entrepreneurs with around 10 lack investment from our parents. The planning part of how to allocate given resources into different fields still poses a big challenge to us.”
Team
Presently, ExclusiveLane is a 20 members team including the co-founder, Kaushal Goyal and the founder, Dhruv Goyal.
“The entire team has been so supportive about our ideas and plans that it seemed possible to reach any heights. We have been growing at a rapid rate year on year. The EL team has been an important part of where we are now”, says Dhruv.