A zesty entrepreneurial tale of building the idea to reality.
The millennial entrepreneur and unfiltered journey of Bummer’s founder – Sulay Lavsi , a powerhouse of energy! And all because of honing multiple introductions to himself. From being identified by Forbes 30 under 30 to having pitch his idea in Shark Tank India. While decoding his and the Brand-Bummer’s journey, Gujpreneur get to shed light on crux of entrepreneurial insights. It’s a story of building a brand from scratch. A testament of experimenting every tactic. It’s an ode to hustle culture that triumphed!
The idea of doing
The founder of Bummer always had a thirst of doing something of his own ever since he was 18. Sulay thereby went on to study Entrepreneurship programme in the US and grabbed certain experiences. He said, “Garment was exciting for me.” With this calling for garment manufacturing, Sulay also learnt tailoring for straight one year. And finally in 2020, he initiated with funky, quirky, colourful underwear brand-Bummer. The 30-year-old, diligently dived deep into a niche market. His primary goal was to cater millennials and the younger generation. Hence locked the name ‘Bummer’ which was extremely catchy and exciting. Though the literal meaning of it stands for Disappointment-a negative connotation. The naming ideology was about turning the negative impact into positive. As Sulay mentioned, “We wanted to say to industry that this is your disappointment and we are here to change it.”
Identifying the USP
After doing a full-fledged R&D, Sulay Lavsi decided to gobeyond black-blue-grey underwear market. He identified that this D2C is an open-ended market to float in. The 30-year-old believed that combination of 3 and multiple things makes a brand! Thereby, Bummer’s USP was set in 3 points—Fashionable. Affordable. Aspirational. In simple terms, it’s a fashionable innerwear at affordable price building an aspirational brand. So building aspiration with fashion is where the Bummer fits in. In order to make sense to the brand, the founder firmly felt to hit one emotion among consumers. This gave Bummer a funny spin in itself! The motto was to pass the comfortable feeling. Feel at home, Feel very natural. So the entire branding and marketing was based upon this ideology of Bummer underwear.
Dhandho is Dhandho
Having a family background into apparel business, Sulay developed a spark of launching a unique underwear brand. He didn’t much bother upon what and how society will react. As he believed that business can merely come out of anything!The 30-year-old entrepreneur says, “Doing something excites you only if you seek an opportunity. And the entire idea of having vision and mission then develops.” Sulay’s vision was a far-fetched as he considered that underwear is a product which can be presented in a unique way. Till date, Bummer’s business is 75% solely dependent upon underwear sales. The founder however doesn’t follow any strict routine. But one thing he doesn’t miss upon is going to office. And to do it stringently, Sulay swayed away his laptop. The only way he functions is through his office desktop. It was also done in the direction to maintain a work-life balance.
Anecdotes of Sulay’s venture
The founder of Bummer always goes by intuition and views world as a market. In-line with the thought, Bummer was introduced in the global market. This experiment wasmarketed for 2 months. And in the same span they received few thousand orders which were equal to 3-4 days’ worth of Indian business. It was surprising for Sulay and his team. But due to bandwidth issues, they had to stop the export. Similarly, remembering the Shark Tank pitch-Sulay says he just can’t recall what happened on stage. Though it brought a huge impact to his business when the episode aired. The entire business boosted up 3x to 5x. When the episode aired, the brand had very little inventory left. This came in as a backlash as customers were waiting for their order delivery. Such anecdotes have been part of Sulay’s experiences that made him learn certain lessons.
Learning Insights from Sulay’s Journey
• The experiences you get in life are stepping stone. And you can’t directly jump into something.
• The personal growth journey never stops and you need to upscale yourself regularly.
• It’s absolutely okay to feel low at times. Learn to accept it.
• Condition your mind to believe what you think.
• Helping yourself is the best help that you can do
• Customers don’t know you so they never empathize with you. All you need to do is get things right for them.
• Keep reminding yourself that your job or business is yourgenuine need and your life depends on it. And there’s nothing much to fallback.
• If you condition your mind that my career is dependent on this, the way of your hustle changes.
The gist of Entrepreneurial trait
Sulay Lavsi has been supremely energetic and hard working all through these years. Gaining experience by doing a list of odd jobs, he managed to build a rock-solid brand. According to him, this entrepreneurship can’t be taught. One has to build the idea of entrepreneurship. And need to be with it day in and out. Having entrepreneurial mindset keeps you going. There’s no ideal definition to success for this 30-year-old. Sulay believes that achieving what you dreamt for and starting new can be termed as success. And this will be reframed for him at his 60 when he retires, adding up to Sulay’s success mantra.
“We always wanted to be known as underwear brand for millennials and younger generation.” – Sulay Lavsi. Bummer has achieved this milestone. This sums up the success story of millennial entrepreneur and founder of BUMMER.
Keep following Gujpreneur for more such interesting entrepreneur stories. Happy reading!
