Journey of Mozters

So this I hope would be the start of something amazing, In Sha Allah, as this is my very first blog, I am not very familiar with this idea of putting my thoughts out, as I am very much of an introvert but still doing it because sometimes you feel like writing at this late hour at night haha. 

 

So, yea Mozters! well my first blog had to be about Mozters, because up until now, the most important work of my life has been Mozters. So first answering the very basic questions, I started off with Mozters in 2013, May 1st I suppose, not sure about the date but I think it was this. 

 

It was first just a facebook page, I was in my first semester of bachelors, the idea mainly generated from this little thought, I actually wanted a biggg poster for my room and I had no place to get it from, so I got the design done by my behn and then got it printed from a random panaflex shop, then got it framed from another place, put it up on my car’s roof and brought it home. Now this I know is very basic stuff but the important point here is while doing all this I realized a business opportunity, that if nobody is doing it, I should do it, why cant I create a company that would supply posters all over Pakistan? Now the best part of knowing less and being naive is that there aren’t much things that can come to your mind and scare you! As we grow up we start to think about the negatives a lot but not when we are young, its very different when you’re starting young and you have very less pressure of being financially stable and providing for your family.

 

I was around 19 years old when I started Mozters, now first going through the process of setting up an fb page, then you obviously need graphics to make it look great, good thing was that I was already a freelance graphic designer since I was in 6th grade, graphics and colors  always intrigued me. So while starting off with Mozters basic graphic knowledge was all that I had. Then after putting up a few graphics on the page, the main issue was having an audience to see all the work I put up… now how will I get enough people to view my stuff? well since I was a kid, it din’t bother me much to explore even the most unorthodox ways to do it haha, so what I did was, I made a fake id on fb hahaha and flooded all the relevant university/college groups with the page’s links, thankfully spamming wasn’t taken so seriously by facebook back then hahaha and I didn’t get any bans for it. 

I would really like to quote a Steve Jobs quote here that is one of my favorites as well:

Basically the whole point is not to be scared of doing anything and breaking a few rules. Being persistent in what you’re trying to do is really important too. So kaafi lecture hogaya, lets move on with this story… 

 

So, after this came the help of my friends, a lot of my friends helped me in gaining followers and even managing my page with me, when I was unable to post regularly, they helped me do it. Now this, little thing meant so much, friends are truly irreplaceable in life and in my opinion you can’t go anywhere in life without friends and support from your loved ones. I was always blessed with an abundance of both. While working on Mozters, I had the support of my family and friends too. I remember in the earlier days, mera bara bhai helping me in packing all those postal tubes of the orders we used to get, even raat tk baith k packing all those parcels, just the 2 of us, me printing the slips out while he was sticking them onto their respective parcels, it was something else the whole experience, we have had many experiences like this while working on Mozters, dhoop mai chhat pe kharay ho k frames khud banana ramzan mai iftari se pehle, ya phr getting paper cuts aankhon mai while trying to pack parcels quickly and stuff like this.

Isse aik quote yaad ayi, i dont know who said it but its still amazing haha:

So just enjoy the struggle you’re in, cos this will be the major portion of your life, the success will come too In Sha Allah, but usme tou lag jatay hain kuch 10 – 15 saal on average aur tb tk age hojani hai, khush ho bhi gaye ghalti se tou age hojani hai haha, tou bs hamesha khush raho struggle main bhi, parallel mai hi struggle k satisfaction aur happiness b ho tou maza hai… ok phr se kafi lecture hogaya, lets get back to the story.

 

After the fb page was done and getting a few likes, the important part was to set goals but tiny goals, I set this goal if I get even around 1 to 2 orders in the first month it would be a biggg success. I got 3 actually, 2 of them were from Karachi! which made me realise that this is something that can actually go Pakistan wide. I can’t express the feeling of accomplishment I felt at that time when I got my first few orders, that is the thing about doing a business venture, tiny milestones give you that ultimate amount of happiness that keeps you going through the toughest times. 

 

So when I got these first 3 orders, phr ye sochna shuru kia k inhe ab deliver kese kerna hai? hahaha cos ye b nai pata tha tb tk, phr along with my bara bhai, I started to look for a courier company jo k Cash on Delivery offer kersakay and more importantly Art related products ki responsibility us wakt koi courier company lene ko tayar hi nai hoti thi. They had no insurance policies for such products and even if they did, the process was really complicated k aap haar hi maan lo, finally we found this one courier company which was offering cash on delivery all over Pakistan, it was BluEx, so we started sending out our parcels through it, their payment cycle was good but mere pas aksar meri postal tubes 3 hisson mai tooti hui wapas ajati thin with one reason on it which was CONSIGNEE NOT AVAILABLE, ab at that time it was so tough for me to bear such losses, it was really demotivating. I also tried Pakistan Post, wo parcel to deliver kerdete thay lekin bs parcel k paise kbi milte thay aur kbi pakistan post k karkunon ki hi jaib mai chalay jatay thay aur ap phr bs bhaagtay raho unke peeche.🙂

 

Around 4 years kuch kaam aise hi chala while I was completing my bachelors degree, thora thora ker k but I never stopped, I always had this in my heart k maine Mozters ko aik achay makaam tk le k jana hai. So in the last semesters of my degree I started thinking about what career will I opt? I was getting this cliche question a lot from my professors and in the interviews I gave in different companies:

I never had the answer to this question because I never had a short term approach to life, I never think where I will be in the next 5 years but I do think a lot about what I will be like in the last phase of my life? when I am old… when I know that I don’t have much days to live, what I will be thinking then? Of course as a Muslim, I will be thinking k maine apni zindagi naik kaamo mai guzari ho, kisi ka haq na mara ho takay mai satisfied houn aur koi regret na ho tb, tou this particular thing has been a motivation for me ever since I planned on achieving big in life, k meri sub se bari driving force will be my achi neeyat, my good intent towards everything, phr beshak koi kami reh b jaye kaam mai tou Allah Taala wo puri ker hi denge aur mjhe meri manzil tk pohncha denge. In Sha Allah!

 

Now back to Mozters haha, so I gave a lot of job interviews in the last year of my uni, I was always asking the interviewers that you guys will have to let me work on my own venture (Mozters) too while I work for you, which I think is a very unprofessional thing to say in your job interview 😐 but I still got selected in a few of them but hamesha interview se wapas aker lagta tha k I won’t fit in this company or this isn’t for me… then i gave it some thought and finally decided that I won’t do a job and instead I will just devote my time to Mozters only.

 

So in the last year of my university, I asked a very close uni friend Mir Hassan Qadeer (naam kafi bara hai lekin banda loosi hi hai haha jk 😐) k wo as a partner Mozters join kerle and I don’t think that he gave it a second thought, he just said okay! and we started our work the very next day, planning everything on our uni registers.

The plan was simple, we just needed Rs.25000/- jisme hum Marketing b kerainge Mozters ki aur sath hi Mir k ghar k 3rd floor pe jo store room tha usse renovate ker k Mozters ka first office banayenge, jisme paint required hoga, flooring required hogi, spot lights and whatever came to our minds at that time, ye sub 25k mai hoga kese? this was a big question, we planned on doing everything khud se, the paint, the flooring everything! We took as little help from outside as we could, to reduce the expenses. 

 

So Rs.10000/- for the Marketing and Rs.15000/- for the office decor. 

but where will this 25k come from? hmm… this was a big question… so I asked my behn, the same behn who helped me with my very first mozter, I asked her if she can put in the initial investment of 25k in Mozters, she then asked me to make a sahi sa professional proposal document bakaida pdf format mai, which should be convincing enough k wo invest kere, -_- why are sisters always like this… So I made a very professional investment proposal for my behn, mailed it to her on her official email address anddd… she never read it. yes! 🙂 and just gave me the 25k for Mozters.

So we invested the 15k in the office decor as we planned while we never had to use the rest 10k in the marketing because whenever we ran the ads, we got enough orders to pay for the marketing from that and this is what we always did, we kept on reinvesting our profits in Mozters all of us were reluctant of taking any money for ourselves, this helped Mozters grow faster. At first there were just 3 of us, Mir, Mera bhai aur Mai and Allah Taala gave us enough will to survive and grow, as Mozters grew we started hiring people and I always thought of hiring my friends, wese tou log Pakistan mai yahi kehte hain k doston k sath business ya koi bhi kaam nahi kerna chaiye but I always thought differently, I always thought agar dosti mai enough sincerity hai tou it will overcome any personal benefits and it has the potential of creating a very nurturing business. One of my very first hires was my childhood friend Umair Chaudhary, who is still working in Mozters. While talking about friends there is only quote that is repeating in my mind abhi its a Hazrat Ali (R.A) ka qoul, I will quote it here:

after this, I’ll just thank Allah (S.W.T) k unho ne mjhe bht rizk dia hai and Allah Taala har kisi ko mukhlis dost ata farmayen! Ameen!

 

Mai baar baar lecture shuru hojata hun, so I will just conclude this now haha, after retaining our profits and reinvesting them in Mozters with every payment cycle, every month and every year, Mozters has its own studio, its own printing, framing, designing and other departments. Shipping orders all over Pakistan everyday and plans to go worldwide soon too In Sha Allah. The 25k that my bhen invested in Mozters has turned into a lot more now haha. 

 

More than the money it generates, it is what we created, an initiative that art can be sold online in Pakistan. A gateway for the artists all over Pakistan, a ray of hope for Pakistani Art.