A fashion brand has landed in Nordstrom thanks to a TikTok video and its viral stars, a pair of entrepreneurs celebrating South Asian culture through apparel.
Niki Shamdasani, who co-founded fashion startup Sani in Raleigh with her sister, Ritika, says viral Tiktok videos helped the company go from weddings to Nordstrom (NYSE: JWN) – in spite of a pandemic that threatened to ground everything to a halt just three years ago.
It started with a problem.
“It’s hard to shop for Indian weddings in the U.S.,” Niki said. When Niki and Ritika Shamdasani got invited to an Indian wedding, they scoured the internet for outfits. They called their grandmother to try to get her to shop for them in India. They ordered looks off of eBay.
What they were able to find in the U.S. was hardly “the most recent styles on Instagram.” So they decided to solve the problem themselves.
While Ritika will soon graduate with a degree in fashion textile management from North Carolina State University, at the time they founded the company, neither had a background in clothing. Niki Shamdasani, a graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill, worked in government consulting. But inexperience didn’t stop them from buying fabric.
“We didn’t end up having to sew the clothes,” she said, pointing to the tailoring industry in India. Her grandmother used to go to fabric stores and bring cloth to a local tailor to get something custom-made. So the sisters brought their fabric choices to India – and quickly realized the entrepreneurial possibilities.
“We ended up finding our very first manufacturing partner through our grandmother’s temple friend’s son who had some excess capacity in his factory,” Niki said.
The pair funneled in some of their savings and they had a business. And success seemed to come quickly. In 2020, the firm launched on Rent the Runway as its first South Asian brand.
“It was taking the business to completely new heights, then two weeks later, the pandemic hit,” she said. “We were this brand selling clothes for Indian weddings when Indian weddings weren’t happening anymore.”
So, just to keep momentum going, the sisters turned to TikTok and started making videos. The sixth one went viral.
“That led to a massive expansion,” she said.
Sani started creating fashions in new categories, such as casual wear. “It became about more than Indian weddings,” she said.
The road to Nordstrom
The firm’s big break came about through a conversation with Andy Dunn, co-founder of Bonobos and one of Sani’s advisors.
“We were talking to him about how Nordstrom has always been an ideal partner for us,” she said. “We think of it as a premier fashion destination … for us it was a natural fit.”
She recalls Dunn saying, “You guys use TikTok for so much, why don’t you make a TikTok video that’s basically a pitch of why you should be in Nordstrom?” So they did. The video was emailed to Pete Nordstrom – “and the rest is history.”
This weekend the sisters will be at a launch event at Nordstrom in Tyson’s Corner Virginia where, for the first time, the grandmother that has been there from the beginning (and has starred in some of their TikTok videos) will get to see the clothes in an actual department store.
Niki Shamdasani said the next step is product expansion, as well as adding in more media partnerships to expand on the content they’ve been creating around South Asian culture and fashion. The goal is to make the conversation about celebration, and not “appropriation,” she said.
Right now, the company is primarily bootstrapped. Other than a small amount of funding from Andreesen Horowitz through an accelerator program, the bulk of the firm’s $200,000 coffer has come from pitch competitions. The sisters have also funneled in their own savings.
“We believe in it,” Niki Shamdasani said.
The sisters also believe in Raleigh. Shamdasani said that, with N.C. State's textile program, she wouldn’t be surprised to see Raleigh emerge as a fashion hub in the coming years. The ingredients are there. It just needs more companies like Sani.