Navigating Diverse Industries, Overcoming Challenges, and Pioneering Trends in the Lingerie Business – A Candid Conversation with an Industry Trailblazer
In this concise interview overview, a seasoned entrepreneur shares their journey in the lingerie business, emphasizing strategic adaptability and the impact of qualifications. Navigating the challenges of the Middle East market, the interviewee discusses the importance of staying updated on trends. The holistic approach to building client trust, illustrated by a case study on addressing transaction errors, underscores the commitment to quality service. Operating a growing lingerie distribution business in the GCC comes with challenges, particularly in optimizing shipping times. Looking ahead, the interviewee envisions the continuous growth of the lingerie industry, particularly in the Middle East, expressing a dedication to sharing the latest trends. Grateful for the opportunity, they extend best wishes to World Times for continued success.
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Career Journey & Specialization in the Lingerie Business
We started the interview by asking, “Can you share some highlights from your career journey, and what led you to specialize in the lingerie business?”
Wessam answered, “The world is now changing and the needs of life keeps increasing. The basic source of income is no longer enough. Since my childhood I always had the skill of searching and negotiating that perhaps was the reason I got indulged in the world of business.”
Adapting Strategic Approaches
You have experience working across diverse industries so we asked, “How do you adapt your strategic approach to cater to the specific needs and challenges of each industry you work with?”
Wessam answered, “The strategy is to keep working on providing the best services and products to your clients in order to keep them engaged, and targeting all segments is also another strategy to hit a bigger sample of clients.”
Impact of Qualifications on Career & Marketing
Then we asked, “Your qualifications include an MBA Certificate in business management consultancy and a list of other certifications in Leadership Development from Chartered Institutes. How have these qualifications contributed to your career?”
Wessam answered, “They strongly contribute to excelling and sharpening my decision taking in the field and that is crucial towards the success of my business.”
Lingerie is a niche market so we questioned, “How do you approach branding and marketing for this type of product, and what strategies have been effective in promoting your products?”
Wessam answered, “The lingerie market in the middle east is very challenging and one of the toughest because of the nature of the culture and the limitations accompanied to that culture and traditions, therefore the marketing for lingerie in the middle east is harder however, our main focus is to stay updated on the latest marketing trends on all the new and current social and marketing platforms.”
Market Analysis
Then we asked, “You also have experience as a business and market analyst. How do you approach analyzing markets and providing valuable insights to your clients or organizations?”
Wessam answered, “The middle east market (Kuwait) is more of a hype one, it is very changing, there is no specific technique to follow for growth here, the analyzing of the middle east market (Kuwait in particular) is driven from an in-depth market observation and experience starting from the time you have been in the market until now. That’s at least my personal experience being in the Kuwaiti market for over 8 years so far.”
Building Trust with Clients
We further asked, “What skills do you use to establish trust with clients?”
Wessam answered, “It’s a combination of many things, to highlight few:
1- Providing good services.
2-Focusing on the after sales is highly important.
3-Hearing the client requests, questions and complaints (if any).
4-Products quality is another important thing.
5-Also, ensuring products prices are reasonable and affordable.
6-The purchase process is easy.
7-Offering discounts, sales and sales bundles are all factors that help in building trust with the clients.”
Resolving Business Problems through Strategic Planning
Everyone face challenges in their life so we asked, “Could you provide an example of a particularly challenging business problem you’ve encountered and successfully resolved using your strategic planning and operational support expertise?”
Wessam answered, “The network errors while clients are completing their online purchases is one of the common issues, we and of course many other e-commerce businesses definitely encounter. Being a CEO myself I also have a good experience in building and designing websites as well as bulding websited with payment integrations so when sales are made through our website one of the problems, we face is the drop of network in between that leads to the failure of the transaction when that happens the transaction is abandoned this on the other hand leads to us losing the sale. Therefore, we are continuously worked on improving our services to avoid this error and make the purchases on our website easier to our clients.”
Opportunities in Lingerie Distribution Business
You mentioned that you are involved with a growing lingerie distribution business in the GCC so we asked, “Could you elaborate on the unique challenges and opportunities you’ve encountered in this industry?”
Wessam answered, “Yes, We have been in the market for nearly three years , during that time we managed to build a solid ground in Kuwait and the middle east market of being one of the popular online stores that avails a big variety, new styles ,high end products at affordable rates .We ensure our clients from the GCC check out smoothly while using our website and their orders arrive to them in timely manner. We also regularly target the GCC customers in our marketing campaigns. The challenging thing we face having to distribute and export to our customers in GCC is the shipping time. Although we try to deliver the orders within 3-5 days, we still are working to get them delivered faster. This so far has been one of the challenges that we are currently facing and working to improve.”
Envisioning the Future
The UK Times: How do you envision the future of the lingerie industry, and what trends or changes do you anticipate in terms of customer preferences and industry developments?
Wessam answered, “The lingerie business is growing and the fashion of lingerie keeps developing. The fashion in lingerie has so much developed in the past 15 years. We no longer know lingerie as standard baby dolls and bustier. It greatly changed and a lot of things have been introduced to world of lingerie. The Middle Eastern women are very fashionable and keen to what’s new and sexy and being a fashion lover myself I wanted to share the latest intimate’s trends with the women in the Middle East.”
Closing Remarks
Lastly we asked, “Would you like to say anything else to our viewers?”
Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity to be on your beautiful magazine and helping me provide small insights about my company, business and skills. I really appreciate it and I wish the World Times magazine all the best and success.” Wessam concluded
Read Wessam Alsenafi Tariq interview here