‘I JUST GO WITH THE FLOW’
NASRAH HUSSAIN MUKHTAR, MANAGING PARTNER, COLLAGE BOUTIQUE
Finance is my forte… Fashion came much later. It has always been properties and investments for me. I’ve been working since the age of 19 with my father in our 45-year-old family-run tobacco business – Hassan Mukhtar and Brothers – until the family split in 2000. My father’s office was my playground, so it was just natural that I would join him in the business. For 12 years, I handled the finance side of his business and he groomed me in investments and stock markets. By my early thirties, I was a pro.
He meant the world to me… When I lost my father, Hussain Mukhtar Al Yousuf, in 2013, I went into a deep depression. So, the business I’d started with my husband Samir Hussain Sajwani took a backseat. I didn’t want to do anything as any new venture would remind me of my father. Two years after my father passed away, my husband bought a 50 per cent share in Collage Boutique in 2015 from relatives of ours who’d put it up on the market as they were leaving the UAE. He felt it’d be a way to get me out of depression and rekindle my interest for business. He was right. Collage revived the business woman in me…
Within two months I’d bought the entire company out as I wanted to run it my way. Today, it’s one of our businesses that helps us make new friends, travel and it’s a business that helps us to relax.
Moving from finance to fashion... has made me more outgoing. In the previous businesses, you always tend to work in the shadows; investments and real estate don’t give you glamour and I was happy in that environment as I’m an introvert by nature. But with the fashion business you need to socialise. Suddenly I found myself having [hosting] events. I love entertaining, that’s fun. It has exposed me to a different world.
I believe... in studying the market before making any investments. Even with Collage, I took my time deciding whether I wanted to expand and to build and establish contacts with new designers. I did my research to see what kind of demands existed. I took three years to bring the business to where we are now because I had to rebuild, rebrand and understand the market.
I like... to treat my different businesses like my children. I don’t compare them, as they all have their own characteristics and need to be treated differently. I’ve partnered with my husband on a number of businesses before Collage – we ran an interiors business called Maison Objet Interiors in Al Quoz and a factory in Sharjah called Zahra furnitures, in collaboration with renowned Indian interior designer Sita Nanda. Some of the other businesses my husband and I have launched together include Delmon Elevations, Lan &Wan technologies, Smartlite.
I just go with the flow... I don’t have a plan for two or three years from now. I know I want to steer the company towards sustained growth but I do it through short-term goals that target the next quarter or six months. At a very young age, I realised that if you have a strategy that you are tied to and things change, it’s difficult to adapt to the change. But if you go with the flow, come what may, you’re always prepared to make quick decisions and work around the constant changes that you face in a business. That is my success.
The advantage of working with your spouse... is it brings you closer. Samir and I come from families that have done business for generations (his family businesses are Zahra Securities and Zahra Technology), so we’re used to talking business at the dinner table. It also has its ups and downs when you don’t see eye-to-eye on a certain point, but that’s just a matter of debating it out like you would with any business partner.
My daughter is a reflection of me… we’re grooming her and my three sons to join the business, but my daughter, who is now 21, is well aware of what is happening with Collage although she’s studying aviation management. She sees the business the way I see it – from a consumer point of view. I see a lot of me in her. However, at the end it’s her choice, we will never dump any business on any of the kids.
I’m grateful for my family’s support… it is the backbone of a successful female entrepreneur because, at the end of the day, if the family is unhappy that you’re not around or that your work demands a certain amount of time from you, you can’t be successful because you’re always stressed. I’m thankful and blessed that it was my father who trained me to be a businesswoman and now my husband is equally supportive and wants me to work rather than stay at home. He’d rather talk to me about work than hear me complain about the cook and the maid. And the children are supportive too. An important lesson my father taught me...
is that your staff is your asset. If you have someone who’s helping you grow your business, then you as the employee have to help them grow too. So, in all our businesses we have partners or a partner who was a staff that helped the business grow. You have to give them responsibilities, a pat on their back and recognise their work. Tomorrow, if your business ceases to exist, your staff ’s reputation in the market should easily get them a job. For me, it’s a compliment when competitors offer my staff jobs. I don’t go to Collage every day because my team handles the operations.
A dream come true… was the day we opened the Collage store in Jumeirah in April last year. We got Indian designer Rajdeep Ranwat on board our advisory panel and together we finalised both Collage Boutique and his store-within-a-store concept in just four days without an interior designer. Today, it is considered one of the best highend stores for multi-labels by people who represent designers. That’s a big compliment. It gives me a high.
I don’t believe in following trends … At Collage, the stock we have is slightly different from what you see in Mumbai or Delhi. I tweak Tarun Tahiliani’s, Rohit Bal’s collections, even Rajdeep’s, because I know what the clientele here need. Fashion for me is constantly changing. I appreciate a woman who doesn’t follow the trends to the T but incorporates them into her own style and isn’t a slave to fashion. Only then can you can have elegance and class.
Diversifying is the key to survival… which is why we’re also going to rope in international, European designers and Emirati designers in 2019. Indian and Pakistani designers have a saturated market here now due to various exhibitions and online business. So as a retail store the only way to survive is to bring in various designers. Moreover, I think it is my responsibility to encourage and offer young Emirati designers a platform.
In the future... I want to start looking into different aspects besides fashion and branch out into homeware and lifestyle as I see a lot of designers launching their own homeware and lifestyle lines, so there’s a demand for it. I’m also interested in the restaurant business and am looking at opportunities that will allow me to incorporate everything and bring it under one umbrella.
Fashion for me is constantly changing. I appreciate a woman who doesn’t follow the trends to the T but incorporates them into her own style and isn’t a slave to fashion.