Polly & other stories is a startup that integrates innovative designs and products with inspiring stories and creative talent of those that make them. They work with a diverse community of innovative designers, artists and entrepreneurs across Pakistan Their stories range from rural women painstakingly crafting beautiful pieces using age-old, hand-worked techniques to a young entrepreneurial artisans crafting handmade soaps and talented men making hand-printed fabric using organic dyes and hand-carved wooden blocks.
Polly & Other Stories aim to change the narrative around handmade. Amneh Shaikh Farooqui is the co-founder of Polly and Other Stories. The startup has has been impacted greatly by Corona virus due to the closure of their main outlets in Lahore and Islamabad. Moreover, they also struggle with an inability to deliver orders being booked via an e-commerce website.
In an effort to keep it running amidst lockdown, they have worked to add flexible Work From Home operations to ensure work does not halt. They have also reduced consumer-facing hours to train store and warehousing staff on the importance of hygiene and packaging practices. They are also planning to develop a pre-planned e-commerce expansion and other digital opportunities as well.
Their team have used this as an opportunity to engage themselves in healthy activities such lke some have volunteered to help digitize databases of daily wage earners in Karachi in an effort for the government to keep track of people who will be most impacted by the crisis. As a company working to find tech-based working with artisanal and small business partners. The company is convinced to focus on sustainability measures amidst the quarantine period. As a slow fashion, handcraft and artisan-based enterprise, the choice to buy handmade products from small businesses who might need the income more can yield a great impact; by using technology to come up with rather seamless innovations in such a period.