Amiri Gandhi, a mother of two, started dreaming of opening her own quirky children's art store in 1998 after watching the Tom Hanks film You've Got Mail. Now, 17 years later, her dream is finally becoming a reality.
Walking around her new 4,500 square foot mock-up play craft factory aimed at children in Abu Dhabi’s Al Wahda Mall, Mrs Gandhi’s pride in finally opening her own shop is clear.
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“In the film Meg Ryan has a little store of her own called The Shop Around the Corner and she’s got a little bookshop where she’s just with kids. I thought perhaps I’ll have a little store of my own where every single corner of it is designed by me. It’s got my little arty touch to it,” she says, beaming.
“Kidz Factory is a dream of mine which I have brought into reality. I am an art graduate and studied applied art as well. I went into the corporate world and have been in advertising for nearly 15 years. Every time I was free at work I would Google up these little folders. Art was still a very strong talent I always had but I somehow never developed it,” she adds. “But time went by and I made a few business plans until I said to myself things are not going to come my way, I’m going to have to go out and do something and pursue my dream.”
The shop provides supervised arts and craft activities for children from the age of 2 upwards. Most activities take 35 to 45 minutes and cost between Dh35 and Dh90.
After opening in December 2014, Kidz Factory is showing promising signs of breaking even earlier than the year and a half initially expected and Mrs Gandhi says that she is now looking at either expanding or franchising.
“I definitely plan to spread my wings. A lot of things have come my way but we are taking it step by step,” she says.
“The UAE is an excellent market for this concept. It’s very seasonal. In the summer there is six months when you can’t even take your kids out to the park because it’s so hot. They don’t have a choice but to come indoors.”
But getting to this stage has been an administrative challenge which took her the past two years.
After contacting a few malls in her home town of Abu Dhabi, Mrs Gandhi was initially downhearted.
"I contacted a few malls and realised not so many of them were for entrepreneurship. They were only interested in international brands which are just brought from all around the world," she says.
“A lot of them loved my idea and concept. But getting a store was very difficult – especially for someone like me who didn’t have a story to show, I just had a story to tell.”
With support from her family and sponsor, Mrs Gandhi finally struck lucky when she managed to secure a sublease in Al Wahda Mall’s Wanasa Land fun zone, which enabled her to lease more space than she would have managed otherwise and for a more reasonable price.
Next, getting around red tape proved a big challenge.
"It was a complete journey by itself," Mrs Gandhi says. "I went personally and got everything approved from the likes of the municipality, ADDC, DED, the Ministry of Labour. There is tonnes of paperwork. We have files and files of approvals. I didn't have time to waste because the rent was ticking on me and we had a deadline.
“The day I got my commercial license issued by DED and they removed that printout from the printer and gave it to me I felt like I had delivered my third baby. I was overjoyed. My husband and I have learnt so much about business by doing this – about salaries and duties and deliveries and shipments. It was like doing a free MBA course.”
Problems included getting the local authorities to approve the company’s name and designation which didn’t fit into any traditional category as well as persuading officials who had filed the company documents under the name “kids factory” with an ‘S’ to change the name in keeping with all of her official branding.
And for Mrs Gandhi and her husband, the challenge of setting up the fledgling business has acted as a drain on both time and money.
“It was a lifestyle change for us,” she says. “It’s a lot of pressure and a lot of financial juggling to make it happen. We couldn’t spend as much time with the kids as we wanted to. We would only accept social invitations we had to go to and not the others. We sacrificed a lot to make this happen.”
lbarnard@thenational.ae
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