Leisure Club, locally-sourced and stitched western clothing for boys and girls of Pakistan was founded in 1997 by SEFAM Private Limited. BR Research met with Leisure Club's core team, senior brand manager - Omar Badi-uz-Zaman, and senior general manager - Omer Chaudry for a discussion over family businesses, apparel retail in Pakistan, and the group's history, successes and challenges.

For five years, Omar Badi-uz-Zaman has worked as a brand strategist, and is now the senior brand manager at Leisure Club and his pioneering vision has been the driving force in defining Leisure Club as a brand, featuring two premium sub-brands: Leisure Club and Leisure Club Kids. Omar holds a bachelor's degree in Arts from the University of British Colombia (UBC), Vancouver, Canada.
Omer Chaudry joined SEFAM Private Limited as the general manager around six years ago with a motto to develop and lead a charge and dynamic Pakistani team to take over the world. Before SEFAM, he served as the head of sales for Europe at Azgard Nine, and brand head for Levis Pakistan.

<B>BR Research: Tell us about the family's history in the business?</B>

<B>Omar Zaman:</B> Our business dates back to the time when my grandfather, J.A. Zaman started off Ali Embroidery Mills 43 years ago, which is still working today. This was the time when the market for machine embroidery on lose fabric was flourishing. However, that industry crashed completely in a very short span of time due to international competition, rising imports, etc. My father Hamid Zaman, who had been working with his father for at least five and had a developed a good knowledge of machines, fabric and the market. decided to get into the retail business. This was a challenge as there was no concept of retail chains in Pakistan as such 31 years ago, and he himself had no practical experience of the same.

After a couple of failures, he entered the industry he was more familiar with. Along with his siblings, he set up his own company SEFAM Private Limited in 1984 with retailing operations starting in 1985. The idea was to manufacture and retail high quality embroidered fabric made in Pakistan that could compete with the Japanese and other qualities of fabrics available in the market at that time. It has been a pioneer company in the concept of chain store marketing in textiles, and today it is the largest fashion house in Pakistan.

We started out with Bareeze brand, and have grown to 12 home brands today. In the last two years, we have added three international brands, getting the master franchisee rights for Armani, The Entertainer (toy shop), and Polo Ralph Lauren, taking the tally to 15 brands altogether.

We also have some partner companies in the family business that started along the way. A key one of them is Sarena Industries & Embroidery Mills (Pvt) Limited, a fabric processing plant established in 2001. It was started because my father was facing multiple challenges with respect to integrity and quality assurance for Bareeze - two qualities that the entire company is established on.

Today Sarena is a vertically integrated, export-oriented unit dealing in weaving, production, CMT, dyeing and finishing, supplying fabric to Europe, America, Middle East and Far East. Even though Sarena was initially established to facilitate SEFAM brands, the latter now only accounts for 13 - 17 percent of Sarena's overall business volumes.

<B>BRR: What is your overall retail presence in Pakistan?</B>

<B>OZ:</B> We are in excess of 430 points of sale. The brands that I am affiliated with are Leisure Club and it offshoots: The Working Woman and Shahnameh.

<B>BRR: Tell us more about Leisure Club.</B>

<B>OZ:</B> 19 years ago, Leisure Club established itself as the first ever branded retail chain for western apparel in Pakistan. It all came into being when a duo of enterprising siblings - with a touch of the same spirit that created Bareeze - observed that the world's best apparel brands were all too often tagged "Made in Pakistan" yet, strangely enough, there was no such premium clothing brand to be found anywhere in Pakistan. The perception was that brands are not for Pakistanis; that we did not value the concept of quality, would not pay a premium for it; and subsequently that anyone wanting to introduce one locally was doomed to failure. And so, anyone who did want quality, branded clothing, had to go abroad to get it. Those who could not afford to or did not have the time had to settle for sub-standard design & fabric quality. This is when Leisure Club was born. I was 9 years old when Leisure Club started. I remember being in the very first photo shoot we had. I along with the help of professionals such as Leisure Club's Senior General Manager Omer Chaudry are trying to carry forward my father and company's vision of taking this brand from being a local institution, to a global player that Pakistanis anywhere in the world would associate with proudly.

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