When a family obsession leads to entrepreneurship
Juhi Verma talks about her newly launched venture – House of Shard and tells us how a family obsession with stained glass designs led to its concept.
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I’m from a naval background and I have stayed in cities all over the country. This has helped me adjust to different people and situations.
While growing up, there were many professions that flitted through my mind. But what I wanted most was to do something creative where I could get my hands dirty and create something absolutely beautiful. House of Shard is my home decor label which specialises in making authentic Tiffany-styled stained glass products. Stained glass is a beautiful art which involves cutting glass into pieces and soldering them together in patterns. We have also started doing glass mosaics recently. House of Shard got registered as a company in October,2015.
Stained glass has been a family obsession as long as I can remember. My family has always been fascinated by things made of coloured glass, be it church windows or colourful drinking glasses. House of Shard was born out of the same obsession!
The initial work started in 2013 when I picked stained glass as my Dissertation project at NIFT. I started from scratch and at that point, I wasn’t even sure if I’ll find the right sources to take my project forward. But things fell into place and I learnt a skill that I wanted to take forward as my brand in future. Fast forward to 2015, with 2 years work experience in e-Commerce under my belt, I was ready to launch House Of Shard- A Contemporary Stained Glass Studio.
Stained Glass is still a rare art to find in India. My attempt is to increase the popularity and see my stained glass home decor products everywhere! The current range has lamps, candle votives, wind chimes, sun catchers etc.
House of Shard is in its initial stages now, partnering with home décor marketplaces to reach a larger audience is my next step. The focus of 2016 will be increasing e-commerce presence and participating in exhibitions. I’m also collaborating with 2 jewellery designers and working on a jewellery collection.
At this juncture, we have a lot of customers through word-of-mouth publicity and customize orders for them. We also get orders from our Facebook page. Our website will launch in early 2016, so it’ll be easier for customers to select products from our collections. So stay tuned!
No two days are the same for me. It ranges from conceptualising and designing the product, looking out for trends in home décor, keeping a track of what stained glass designers are doing globally, manufacturing the product (all the glass work is done by me and metal and woodwork is outsourced), sourcing materials, meeting clients, graphic designing and working on social media content/website design, etc
As a first time entrepreneur, there is a lot I’m learning and also making mistakes on the way. It’s very easy to get discouraged if something goes wrong or the business isn’t growing as fast as you would like.
Thank you Juhi for sharing your story!
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