My company makes shoes from leather and sells them on the wholesale market. I started my business back in 2006. I have been doing this business for the last 15 years. When I started, I was just in my 20s. Before starting my own business I was just a student with no prior experience of doing business whatsoever. So I tried to learn about business. I tried to learn about the shoe industry from Dhaka and from that I started my own company, G.F.C Footwear. 

My business was running very well before COVID. I had a lot of employees looking after the production. I used to get a lot of orders from different B2B clients. However, during COVID I had to shut down my business. It was off for a few months. During that time, I tried to use my savings to run my family. My business wasn’t in any shape to run during the pandemic time. However, I was confident that I could bring my business back to life. Thus, I waited for the right time and when the pandemic was lenient, I started my business again on a small scale. Right now I have only around 6-7 employees with an average profit of 40-50 thousand per month. 

In order to revamp my business I had to start slow and on a small scale. I even took a loan from a bank worth 1 lac 40 thousand BDT. Most of my clients are B2B clients across the country. One of the biggest barriers that I faced during my business is the amount of receivables I have from my clients. I have around 10 Lac tk of receivable in the market still pending. I am trying to collect them as soon as possible. My future plan is to get access to the export market and expand my business as much as I can. 

I got to know about LCP from the Poppy foundation. I received training on different business activities from NGOs and consulting firms like LCP. During my journey I faced a lot of huddles, Pandemic was one of the biggest of them all. However, I didn’t completely shut down. Even when I did, I started again. And I plan to always keep on running my business and one day get into the export market.