Headgear, a home-grown brand that every cap lover has fallen in love with

Today I want to talk about HEAD GEAR. A brand that sold more than 1 million BDT worth of Cap in Bangladesh last night on their Black Friday sale.

Imran Hosaain & Iftekhar Ahmed Efad started the journey in 2021 with 0 capital. Two brothers, Imran studying at university, and Efad only in college. They found out that the Bangladesh market has a gap that can be filled.

?

The Rise

The first testing started with their own savings of 12k BDT ($120). Imran went on and bought some caps from distributors and they just started selling.

The key was customer satisfaction from day 1. They both had some previous experience with DTC brands and they knew customers being happy is paramount. Even with razor-thin margins, every cap came in a cardboard box instead of a plastic bag.

Regardless of the reasoning, they returned products every time the customer wasn’t satisfied. Each customer call was handled by the founders themselves. After a few months, they had a loyal customer base, who knew their experience and needs would never be compromised.

?

Tragedy

By August 2022, Head Gear reached 1 million+ BDT in monthly sales. With everything going great, Facebook randomly decided, they’d just shut down a page with more than 1.2 million likes because of a “community standard breach”

So, after working for more than 1.5 years, they were back to 0 overnight. Imagine being two young guys and seeing all your efforts go in vain.

?

Comeback

Unlike most other guys who would just be down and out with the adversity, these two guys decided to take it to the next level.

They realized that they needed their own e-commerce if they had to go past the Facebook dependency. It took more time but by the end of 2022, they were again making 300k BDT monthly again primarily from their website.

That’s when they reached us to me and my brother. They wanted to take it to the next level but that’d require some funding and additional resources. There was a critical step to figure out though then.

Headgear primarily only sold caps that were 3rd party basically, so they were essentially a reseller brand. In order to truly expand, Headgear needed its own identity.

?

Creating own identity

By May 2023, Headgear slowly transitioned into a brand that had almost all its own caps. It was a scary call. As their sales were growing more than 20% MoM the brand identity was more important.

Ikramul Hoque Rayan has extensive experience in the RMG supply chain so he had the whole thing planned out on how to make the best quality products while Efad looked after operations and Imran worked on designs both on content & product.

Over the last 6 months, Headgear went from a complete reseller product brand to one with 65 unique designs today. Designs that encompass local culture, niche taste, and unique insights.

The brand has reached such incredible heights now that they have a thriving community of thousands of people, and more than thousands of followers in multiple channels. The proof was that on a 50% sale night, they reached more than 1 million BDT in sales without any retail presence, major celebrity endorsement, or huge social media campaigns.

?

Vision

Headgear wants to go global. As a brand, it has the quality, personnel, and potential to reach incredible heights. This team doesn’t just want to be another e-commerce store. Their dedication to customer satisfaction is honestly unparalleled. In a market, that is generally very unorganized, Headgear has been a beam of light.

?