Styling for success
How Zing helped Future Connoisseurs scale up 3x
The Future Connoisseurs: How Zing helped Shahzad Haider scale by 3X
Working in luxury fashion for more than 25 years has taught
entrepreneur Shahzad Haider a thing
or two about more than theindustry’s past, but its present and future, too. The former chairman of the board for a luxury fashion association in the Middle East, Shahzad had a vision when he moved to New York City.
The former chairman of the board for a luxury fashion association in the Middle East, Shahzad had a vision when he moved to New York City. He saw an opportunity to establish an ecosystem around luxury fashion on a global scale.
His vision, Future Connoisseurs, is an invitation-only, membership-based alliance that brings together the industry’s designers, innovators and thought leaders. Its aim? To create a future of luxury beyond brands.
Finding the right
Business Partner
First, however, he needed to establish its presence online. He recalls:
“I was looking for someone to create this website.
I think it took me seven months… I talked to
maybe more than 100 people.”
But not just any one would do for such an
important project, according to Shahzad.
“I was so desperate because I wanted someone
to be desperate to do something. My brief to Zing
was, I want you to create a website which makes
you proud that you have done it. I don’t want you
to create another website…”
He told Zing:“I want a website that you think
will become your signature project. If it’s not
that project, don’t do this. There’s no point.
I’m not interested. And then he really
understood it. And he went all of it. He went
all the way.”
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Standing out from the crowd
With more than 27 luxury associations operating on a global level, Shahzad recognized the importance of distinguishing Future Connoisseurs from them.
“Our main objective was identifying how we should differentiate from the others. How do we make the distinction between us and them?”
To overcome this, the chairman met with the team at Zing early on for preliminary discussions.
He explains:
“We did have a lot of creative meetings early on to work out what kind of positioning and packaging would be needed to present Future Connoisseurs globally.”
Fearless approach
In web development, the greatest challenge often comes when clients don’t know what they want. With Shahzad, the Zing team found the exact opposite. He confesses:
He confesses: “From day one I knew exactly what I wanted.”
Armed with that strong vision, he cautioned his colleagues at Zing:
“You have a mountain to achieve and we don’t have any tools.”
Never ones to shrink from a challenge, Zing’s development team
undertook a steep learning curve to deliver exactly what was required.
Revealing Results
The Future Connoisseurs website launched officially in 202X.
Feedback from Future Connoisseur’s audience has been very positive, according to Shahzad: “Everybody was hands down - saying the content, feel, messaging and packaging of the website is fabulous.”
Always a perfectionist, he appreciated Zing’s unwavering commitment to creating the platform Shahzad envisioned.
“The Zing team worked tirelessly on this. They have done a few things which they’ve never done before but they never backed down from it. We kept trying and did not leave anything until it was perfection.”