The founder of Odd Trunk is building a home decor business with the help of Instamojo.
Our business podcast – mojoMakers (Season 2) was launched recently where we had Riddhi Rohit share her hits and misses when building this brand.
You can listen to her growth story here:
Here’s a TL; DL (Too long, Didn’t listen) version for you 🙂
Contents
Creative inspiration from ancient tales
We all know two or three students in high school who used to fill up their exercise books with doodles and artwork! Well, our founder – Riddhi Rohit was exactly like that.
Riddhi always found comfort in letting her creativity flow out of the tip of her pen.
Her products today are best known for reflecting artistic designs and themes found in historic India and also far east Asian cultures. You got it right – anime.
A massive enthusiast of anime in school; along with hearing ancestral south Indian stories from her grandmother at home. Both amalgamated to influence Riddhi’s designs today as we see them today.
The unique touch of Odd Trunk
The most popular products on Odd Trunk are fridge magnets, wall plaques, keychain charms, car charms, and the list goes on! Her products can be described as quirky, colourful, aesthetic and fun. (Riddhi loves calling them whimsical too!)
Do you see how her drawings have the Indian elements of dark skin, gold jewellery and the forehead tikka? Along with them, you can see eastern elements of large bright eyes, tiny button noses and an overall feeling of kawaii (cute).
Why home decor?
Even though Riddhi completed her master’s degree in a completely different industry, she always knew she wanted to start her own business. And her motivations? Her love for cute things, whimsical artwork and making people happy.
Instamojo online store: Odd Trunk
Home decor is the simplest way to make a person happy. A beautiful home is a comfort and a privilege for many. When guests arrive and see unique little things here and there, it just makes the experience so much more wholesome.
And that is why Riddhi decided – let’s sell home decor online, shall we? and the journey started.
Related read: How to sell home decor online and start a successful eCommerce store
Selling home decor on Instamojo
She wanted a platform where she could reach customers easily, could keep track of who was ordering what and also have a centralised system for all payments. She found all of these and more with Instamojo.
Most small business owners who want the world to know about their business have one specific pain point – they love creating but they don’t love the headache of managing a business.
This is why a platform like Instamojo does most of the work for you.
- Want a website that is clean minimal and attractive for your customers? Done.
- Want a single dashboard from where you can manage orders, get analytical insights, and also access marketing tools? Done.
- Want to conduct store-wide sales for the festive season? Done and done.
Odd Trunk is a thriving home decor business that is also slowly reaching its larger vision. Riddhi’s products due to the nature of their designs have gained some popularity in countries like Brazil, Japan and more.
She wants to set up her business internationally and also open offline stores soon!
Related read: 10 powerful marketing tools and features you can find on the Instamojo dashboard
An incredible nugget of advice from Riddhi
We were enthralled with Riddhi’s online store. But as cute and colourful as her store has been, her personal experiences have had plenty of hiccups.
There’s one particular story that we heard from her which could prove to be very valuable for other handmade artists on Instamojo.
All creators, designers, and handmade artists start out with a mental image of what they want their product to be. Illustrators like Riddhi, draw out these mental images digitally.
For one pop-up store event, where Riddhi was scheduled to display about 200 Christmas-related products, she had an intense learning experience. The images that she had created, had to be printed out and pasted on a relevant cutout for the product.
The drawback? Things that look one way mentally or even digitally – may look completely different physically. Riddhi had to hand-paint 200 pieces of artwork again to match her vision. (Safe to say, it ultimately was a success though!)
But as an artist, it is important to first create and produce samples when selling handmade products.
Want to be like Riddhi? You need to take the first step. And after that, we are here for you.
Sign up for absolutely zero cost on Instamojo now!
