After Lazada, he started an online fashion brand with his partner. It’s profitable and growing

Roman Khan and Jennifer Chong. The duo started fashion brand Linjer in 2014. Photo credit: Linjer.

In the span of three years, Linjer has grown into a multimillion dollar online fashion company and it’s turning a healthy profit – a story that stands out in the world of fashion ecommerce, where profitability remains elusive even for established players.

Roman Khan and Jennifer Chong co-founded Linjer with a budget of US$20,000 – half of which went into crafting the company’s first crowdsourcing campaign, including a high-end video which set the tone for the classy brand. Now they turn an annual revenue of over US$10 million.

Linjer’s product was a briefcase – a meticulously designed leather bag, using the best materials in the market, but priced more affordably than top luxury brands.

Its crowdfunding campaign raised about US$190,000, enough to go into production. After that, Khan and Chong set up a new campaign for Linjer’s next product – an equally well-crafted handbag for women. Linjer sells exclusively on its own website.

In a nutshell, according to Khan, this is the business model that led Linjer to success: “Crowdfund every collection launch and be the brand, not a reseller.”

Neither Khan nor Chong, who is a former management consultant, had a formal design education. They were both passionate about style and had specific expectations – the rest, they learned on the go.

“We sent over sketches to the factory; they said this is horrible, we can’t work with that. They then sent over a technical file from one of their clients and said this is how we want it presented. We took that – reverse engineered it,” Khan recalls. “Jenn is brilliant at picking up new tools and processes.”

After its first product sold successfully, Linjer diversified, adding collections of women’s handbags. Photo credit: Linjer.

Of course, it wasn’t all smooth sailing. The first batch of bags actually came out wrong. Khan and Chong had to call every customer personally to apologize for the delay. It was also a financial hit for the young firm, but they were determined to fix the problem and deliver a perfect product.

They changed manufacturers and soon Linjer was ready to add a new line of products, this time watches. Again, it raised the necessary capital to start production through crowdfunding. This campaign scored nearly US$1 million in pre-orders.

The merits of slow growth

The startup hasn’t taken any venture capital and isn’t planning to anytime soon. It was a conscious decision to go the bootstrapping route.

Khan learned about fashion and ecommerce from his time at two ventures launched by Germany’s startup builder Rocket Internet, Zalora and Lazada.

Life after Facebook