RAFIA FERDOUS: Bringing Finest Brands at your Disposal

October 22, 2022

RAFIA FERDOUS Providing the best deals in Dhaka - Cover

Owner and founder of Deal Of The Day, Rafia Ferdous, is providing fashion enthusiasts an incredible platform to shop from. Being born and brought up in Bangladesh Rafia figured the lack of presence of several brands in the country to keep up with the current fashion trends. She decided to cater to the issue and took matters into her own hands. During a conversation with TINDS, she opens up about her E-commerce platform, Deal Of The Day.

Tell us a Little bit about your platform.

Rafia: We cater to all the shopping needs of our customers. We provide virtual shopping assistance along with very personal services. Anything that you need from Malaysia, we’ll have that shipped to you. Deal of the day bridges the gap between the customers and the brands that they don’t have access to. We started back in March, 2020 and we have two stores in Dhaka right now. It was something that I started when the pandemic hit, almost out of boredom you can say but things took quite a turn from there and love and support that we keep getting from the customers along with the compliments regarding what we do really motivated me to keep at it. We are a team of seven people, all of whom are girls because I firmly believe in Girl Power.

How did you manage to get things done within the pandemic?

Rafia: It was a very bad time. When I started, I did because I noticed that since people could not travel there might be things that they wanted to buy that are not available in Bangladesh but couldn’t because they did not have access to it. The only way out was to order it online. During the very first few months, we did not have any methods of shipping since flights weren’t running. We weren’t able to deliver any products to our customers for almost five long months and I am beyond grateful to the people who ordered back then and waited so long to receive their orders.

What led you to launch Deal of the Day?

Rafia: I am a shopaholic myself but I like to do the wise kind of buying so I look out for deals because most brands often offer sales where prices are reduced to a minimum but it is not possible to be aware of these deals not being around the brands offering it. I figured a lot of people could benefit from this. People visiting other countries often tend to shop from there but they wouldn’t necessarily be there while the sale is going on. Deal of the day aims to glorify and highlight the sales so that people get the best deal which the name suggests as well.

How did you grow so much in such a short time?

Rafia: Initially I mainly focused on skincare and makeup products but the turning point was when we started introducing clothes and when I added my presence I could see that people were responding more and even till today that’s what we specialize in. Even in our stores we are mostly only selling clothes now. We wanted to make sure that people have all the trendy clothes in good time while the trend still exists. We did a lot of influencer marketing which worked out great on our part. When working with other influencers, it is always important to make sure that the target audience of the person and the business is similar. We have been able to grow with the right collaborations. There was a lot of trial and error involved but we eventually figured out the best way to do it.

How did you manage working with so many brands?

Rafia: We are currently offering products from all brands in Malaysia. Deal of the Day aims to bring to you all the latest and hottest sales happening around the world. Why pay the full price for an item when you can get it at 50% off, right? By the Grace of Allah (SWT) we’ve had the pleasure and opportunity of having some amazing clients. Who’ve been showering us with their love and support since day one. We are now VIP buyers for many brands like Aldo, Michael Kors, Charles & Keith, Sephora, Insiders for Coach and many more. We always offer 10-20% off on regular priced items for the brands where we are listed as VIP buyers for. Other than that one of our bestselling brands is Shein. I personally recommend Shein as they provide a huge range of clothing items and accessories which can be considered stylish and affordable. ZARA has been on the bestseller list as well.

RAFIA FERDOUS Providing the best deals in Dhaka

How do you envision its growth in the coming years?

Rafia: The amount of love and support we received since the beginning has only motivated us to push beyond our limits. When we launched our website we were a bit skeptical about it but it has exceeded our expectations. I plan on expanding furthermore where we have a big store of our own, if everything goes right we might have a bigger third store coming up. Other than international brands I would love to share the platform with local brands as well. There are some amazing local brands which are thriving and we have plans to introduce them on the Deal of the Day platform so people can have access to not only international sales, but all the local brands offer as well. I would eventually like to start my own clothing line as well.

What would your advice be to younger entrepreneurs?

Rafia: I would ask them to trust the process. It’s almost never an easy run and even today I keep telling myself to trust the process. Just because something doesn’t look nice today, does not necessarily mean it’s not capable of working out. Keep on working hard, hustling and always do your thing, because eventually it all works out.