I have been doing this business of selling shoes and leather for around 12-13 years through my company Tower Shoes. Before this I used to work as a shoe craftsman for around 15 years. Before doing business, as a craftsman I used to like my work. However, my earnings were not enough to run my family of two daughters and a son, who now go to school regularly. That’s why I started my own business of making shoes to earn more profit by using my experience of 15 years. And so far, I have been successful to earn enough profit through my business to run my family on my own.

However, the journey wasn’t so easy. I started this business with just 50 thousand taka, taken from my parents. Initially I wasn’t even able to make any profit at all. In fact at first I was at 1 lac taka loss with my business. However, I kept on doing my business and tried to find different ways to gather money to invest in my business. I took help from different NGOs as well to get some investment for my company. Then slowly we started making profit with my business. I have a total of 8 employees out of which 7 employees are working on production and 1 employee is currently working with me. They are given a salary ranging from 7000-20,000 BDT. Our company largely depends on bulk order from 4-5 dealers. Apart from that, we sell shoes to customers as well. Gradually we were starting to make a profit of around 70,000-80,000 BDT a month. Everything was going smoothly until COVID came last year and we started facing struggles with our business. 

Due to COVID our dealers started to reduce the number of orders for our shoes and we started losing customers as well. Due to this we faced around 4-5 Lac BDT loss, which seemed unrecoverable. Last year I even thought I would not be able to run my business anymore. My family members were also encouraging me to give up on my business and go abroad to do some job. A lot of my family members are currently working abroad to run their family. But I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to do business, educate my children and run my family in this country. I had to do something about it. That’s when I started collecting money from different receivable sources who owed me money. I took loan and financial benefits from different NGOs again to keep my business running. Gradually my business is starting to cover up the loss it faced due to COVID. The COVID situation is improving slowly as well. I am thus looking forward to the market in the upcoming months to make some good profit especially during this EID. 

Throughout my journey I am grateful to a lot of people. My parents, friends who lended me money and also different NGOs, who were by my side during the difficult time of COVID. My employees are currently getting training from different NGOs as well. One mentionable name is the Poppy Shometi from Jamalpur. Through them we were also able to learn about LCP and how they are helping different SMEs like me to improve their business by providing business development services and training. 

I want to grow my business in Bangladesh in the future and secure the future of my children in this country as well. With that dream I am running my business and constantly trying to make it bigger and better by providing quality products at a profitable but reasonable price. And within the next few years I believe I will be able to do so In Sha Allah.