Story of an ex-corporate cog who turned into an entrepreneur

Posted by parisha kumari on September 13th, 2021

A successful entrepreneur’s story is not just about his/her destination. It is also about their journey. A journey that is full of struggles, challenges, sacrifices, hard work and eventually valuable gains. A similar journey was experienced by Vaibhav Mittal, Head, Sales and Marketing, Lujo Trends Pvt. Ltd. From sourcing the products to developing a platform to sell them, taking photographs of the products, and packaging them, this young entrepreneur did it all with a small squad.

Vaibhav’s witnessed the first signs of success when Lujo\'s footwear brand Guvava started doing well on his platform. He then built a squad of 60 employees to expand the brand. And then Myntra on boarded Guvava on its platform. Over a year, the footwear brand’s monthly sales surged to a crore from 1.5 lakh-2 lakh rupees! And since then Vaibhav’s business has been thriving on Myntra. Apart from manufacturing his own products, Vaibhav and his crew also manufacture for Myntra’s in-house brands such as Kook & Keech and Mast & Harbour. In addition to this, Lujo also has three other brands that offer casual, formal and sports shoes with 400-500 styles to customers on the Myntra platform.

In Vaibhav’s words, “We were lucky that Myntra on boarded us. Within a year of coming on-board with Myntra, our sales grew by over 50X and since then there has been no looking back. When my friend, who started his business later, asked how his company could sell on Myntra, I told him there is no recipe, one needs to have good quality products, and they will get a mail or call soon.”

How did everything start?

It all began in 2014 when Vaibhav’s father started living with him in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, soon after retiring from a government job. His father had no friends in the new city, and had a lot of free time. That’s when the family thought of commencing something to keep him busy.

In the same year, Vaibhav, former HCL employee, was asked to move to America for work. However, he was reluctant to shift because of multiple reasons, including his son’s – special child – medical conditions. It was during this time when he decided to start his own business in the country itself.

Initially, Vaibhav used social media platforms to promote his products. In the early stage, social media advertisements led to a decent amount of sales for his brand. However, growing competition and increasing expenditure on ads persuaded Vaibhav to look for other options.

“That\'s when Myntra happened. It was the only marketplace that was working on purchase, order-based model. When you sell a product to Myntra, they take care of marketing, packing and shipping to customers. In other marketplaces, the seller needs to calculate too many things, but with Myntra, it was a 30 to 40 per cent fixed margin for us,” Vaibhav says.

Besides this, Vaibhav and his team also received support from Myntra’s Brand Manager who shared valuable knowledge on growing trends and styles, and helped his squad understand what’s performing well on the digital platform.

The pitfalls of COVID-19 pandemic did not stop Vaibhav from prospering

Vaibhav confesses that the COVID-19 pandemic had a negative effect on his business, however, with the support and hard work of his team, kin and Myntra, Lujo Trends brands’ sales picked up and gradually witnessed tremendous gains. He concludes the interaction by saying, “Do not stop at any given point if you’re very passionate and determined about something.”