Image: Mr Kamal and his team at Ozel’s storefront
Kamal Abdul Razak established Ozel SG Pte Ltd in 2015, a local brand based in Singapore that focuses on the fusion of the traditional batik and songket with modern Malay/Muslim apparel.
At the start, Kamal operated his business from a store within an industrial building. Ozel grew over the course of a year and now has a storefront in the vicinity of Kampong Gelam. Moving to a storefront at a prime location generated more awareness for Ozel, prompting Kamal to further enhance business operations.
Going digital
Kamal met Qamarul, one of our Business Advisors in 2018 with the hopes of improving Ozel’s existing e-commerce website.
“I’ve been wanting to include an additional feature onto my website that will allow customers to customise their outfits,” explained Kamal. Through discussions, Qamarul connected Kamal to a technological vendor, who would assist the entrepreneur in developing a website prototype that would allow Ozel to create bespoke outfits for their customers.
Further than that, Kamal collaborated with the vendor to further improve his existing POS system by integrating it with an ERP system. This integration allowed Kamal to monitor inventory and incoming sales from both his e-commerce site as well as the storefront through a cloud system.
“We live in a digital age where everything is now on cloud, making everything easily accessible and at your fingertips. Having an integrated solution allows business owners like Kamal to ensure that data is constantly up to date and easily retrievable. This increases business efficiency and productivity,” explained Qamarul.
Reaching beyond Singapore
Part of Kamal’s plans to grow his business included expanding overseas.
“There has been plans to go beyond Singapore and at first, we were looking forwards Philippines. However, we’ve identified Indonesia as the best possible market to penetrate into. I have existing businesses in Indonesia, so I am better aware of the business landscape there,” shared Kamal.
With Qamarul’s assistance, Kamal managed to set up a satellite office through the Market Readiness Assistance (MRA) Grant and has successfully gone from a sole proprietor to a private limited company.