So a bunch of engineering graduates, bored with just being the usual, decide to come together and do more than just draw doodles at the back of their notebooks. They come up with Hoozinc. A tee-shirt franchise that sells in small, medium, large and extra-large sizes, Hoozinc officially began in October when they started selling their first batch of tees.Set up by four friends, the company is now headquartered on Facebook, with booking orders, catalogues and samples posted on their page. This bunch of 21-year old's include Chandni Mathur, Ankit Sharma and Urmez Bhode along with Nikhil Kapur, who's 22. All graduates from Muffakham Jah College of engineering and technology, they met as batch mates while studying mechanical and production engineering. The team is divided thus - Nikhil and Urmez as the fountain heads of design, Ankit as the marketing and social media liason and Chandni as the administrative head. “Nikhil and Urmez are constantly coming up with designs. Once ready, the design is put through us (Ankit and me) and then our friends tell us what they think. That's pretty much how designs are finalised,” explained Chandni. “Our target is to come up with a design every day. That way ideas keep flowing. So whatever it is, there will be at least two designs everyday,” said Nikhil. With a target market of people ranging between the age groups of 16 to 30, Hoozinc designs are created keeping in mind how unique they can be and the unisex appeal it will have. They're designs include a light bulb that reads think positive, a motrbike, a tribute to Hyderabad that says 'Chai Chillum Chapathi', the facade of an Ace playing card and the Hoozinc logo, among others. Printed on basic colours like black, white, red and blue, the unisex shirts are round necked and mono-toned. “The idea is to keep it simple. Nothing too garish or loud. Our designs are meant for anyone and everyone, so we try to keep it quirky too,” says Urmez. Agreeing, Ankit adds, “While our target was 16-30-year old's, we've had older people around the age bracket of 45 pick up our stuff. So the simplicity works.” The idea for the company sprouted sometime around August, after finishing college. They began researching, checking out brands and quality, trying to figure out how to go about the project.“We managed to locate a supplier in Tirupur. We had a few samples sent to us from different suppliers, compared the quality and decided on one. Then we tracked down a printer over here who would do the rubber printing for us,” explained Chandni. “So the shirts come in and then we get it printed here. That we can see exactly how it's being done and keep a track of it,” added Nikhil. Now that they had their design and tees ready, how were they planning to market it?“Our friends passed on the message. Plus we put up the FB page. Besides that, to get attention among the locals we put up fliers and stickers around the city, from coffee shops to autos to just about any available space. We also tied up with Jockey and Testa Rossa and left some stock there. And that's how the word spread,” says Ankit. With their popularity picking up, the team is slowly starting to branch out into other merchandise.“We're planning on coasters, we've already started canvases and will soon have badges and other stuff. As far as the canvases, we'll be taking in custom orders because we're painting them ourselves. The rest though, we won't be able to because we get them done in bulk,” says Nikhil.As of now, their tees are priced at Rs 349 while the canvas paintings are priced Rs 550 (introductory offer only, they clarify).With an assumed market of about 20,000 people who know of Hoozinc, the company plans to grow in to a brand that will spread to other cities.“We'd like to take our stuff to Lifestyle, where it will hit multiple cities at the same time, or start one on our own at smaller places like Pune or an unexplored market like Chennai where this concept isn't very common,” they point.Either ways, Hyderabadis can look forward to a new batch of designs by the end of this month.
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