Here’s the story of Meedo – One stop solution for Customised Lifestyle products like T-shirts, Bags, Jewellery, Perfumes…
Catch them on –http://www.meedo.in/
In conversation with Vinoth Kumar of Meedo –
Tell us about the story of your startup – Why did you start this, how did you start, when did you start?
I used to run a retail outlet for the last 4 years, the idea of customised stuff struck when I was running the retail outlet in a very small place to validate the market in that particular locality. In our first year of operation, we missed sales because customers want a lot of options, but as a retailer it is very difficult to stock each and everything. For a business like mine, there isn’t any window shopping, rather business happens with regular & loyal customers. So we identified that there is some real problem to be addressed. We also did a small market survey among the retail owners and majority of them showed interest in launching customised service in their outlets. Thus, we decided to go with it. And, to take one thing at a time, we selected tees.
How did the co-founders come together?
I bootstrapped from scratch, so right now, I am a one man show, as I don’t want to increase my expenses before things are in place. Now we are in a position to scale and will start looking for people in a few months.
What challenges did you face and how did you deal with them?
Though I understand technology, I am not a developer myself. The initial hurdle for me was to find the right company that could develop what we needed, but within our budget. It took us time, but we ended up with a company in Mohali – Beckon Dwelve, thanks to Elance.
What is your aspiration for the venture?
Since we started off with Tees, many think of us as another custom T-shirt service provider, but customers who have experience our service are very delighted, as the customisation we offer is much more than any other online players. We are doing the ground work to set up 100 partner outlets, after which we will be launching customised Jewellery, Bags and Perfumes. And our 101st partner will be outside India.
What did you learn from the journey so far?
We have spent some time on capturing kiosks without the right tools or money in hand, then we realised that creating cash flow is critical. So, we started creating revenues in multiple avenues with the help of our app. Things are falling in place and soon we will be launching the kiosk part in major cities.
If you had to start all over again, what would you do differently?
Would have created more revenue before announcing the kiosk part.
