Photo: Jed Cullen/Dave Benett/Getty Images for Carolyn Dailey
The following is an exclusive excerpt of an interview with designer Priya Ahluwalia, from Carolyn Dailey’s new book, “The Creative Entrepreneur, A Guide to Building a Successful Creative Business From Industry Titans,” available for purchase here. Reprinted by permission of Carolyn Dailey, 2025.
Building a Business
My mum is a financial director, so she was a great help in figuring out the fundamentals like securing trademarks, the company structure and other key details. We set it all up very quickly. I knew I wanted to do a new collection, but had no idea how I was going to present it or where. The British Fashion Council had picked up on what I was doing, but the brand was too young for their New Gen programme, which funds and mentors emerging designers. But they gave me an area to display my new collection during London Fashion Week.
That turned out to be huge, because Adidas saw that display and asked me to do a fully fledged runway show as part of the upcoming Paris Fashion Week. That was my first runway show and it was incredible. David Beckham and Pharrell were there. That took the brand to a different stratosphere.
Growing a business is so much about understanding an opportunity and then seeing how you can create the next opportunity out of that. And a lot of it is because I think I’m a people person – at the end of the day it’s only human beings who do business. So being able to get on with people and show how you bring them value or show why your ideas will make their ideas even better – those things are really important.
I want to have a brand that grows into a lifestyle brand so we can do lots of different things. It’s about people, getting your ideas out into the world and making money from it.
Whether you want to have billions in the bank or just enough money to make your next project, it’s business that lets you do that.
“Connection” vs the Dreaded “Networking”
Building good relationships is key. I hate the word ‘networking’ – it doesn’t have to mean some sort of seminar where you wear a name tag. But going out to certain places where you bump into people, you meet people, and mingling with people who are also trying to work on the same dream, no matter what stage of their career they’re at, is really beneficial. ‘Networking’ has such a corny corporate vibe to it. But it’s really just connecting with people. No person is an island, no person can create and build these amazing businesses on their own. If you look at any successful business person, there’s always a team that helped them get there. So, it’s important to find your people – people who believe in you but who can also challenge you, and people you also believe in. I ran into a friend at the library today who’s a costume designer. We started talking and the back and forth spurred a whole bunch of new ideas for each of us. That’s why ‘networking’ is great. It’s not only about practical things, like ‘I’m looking for a photographer’, it’s about meeting people with whom you can discuss and grow your ideas. It’s a key part of the creative process, that back and forth.
Takeaway
One of the most crucial pieces of advice about building your own business is to recognise how crucial informal networks are. While the formal networks of conferences, seminars and the like are crucial as well, it’s easy to overlook how the informal gatherings of like-minded people – which may seem just social or to be focused solely on your creative (vs business) interests – are crucial as well. It’s the spontaneous conversations which can often spark the biggest lightbulb moments and also lead to opportunities or new contacts you hadn’t known of before.
Growing the Business
After the Adidas Paris show in January 2019, we started picking up more stores and sales were increasing. I’ve been honoured the brand has received many awards, and each time we do, it really does open new opportunities – people want to buy more or partner with you more, and you also meet more people. I introduced womenswear and that really changed things. Having started out in menswear, I always knew I wanted to do womenswear, but introducing it takes a lot of time. I didn’t have the capacity at the beginning, but people kept asking me when I was going to introduce it. When I had my first employee, we started womenswear, and it was great. It was successful straightaway and has become really popular now.
And then there was Covid, which was a really scary time. But it also made me think about diversifying. I ended up doing a lot of brand partnerships, both individually as well as my brand. I did a collaboration with Ganni for a few years, which was actually how I launched womenswear, and also collaborations with Paul Smith for menswear and Mulberry for bags.
Harnessing Tech to Pioneer New Spaces
In 2021 I did a tech-focused collaboration with Microsoft. They said, ‘Why don’t you think about a problem you’re having in your business and how tech could be the solution?’ So I designed a platform called Circulate that uses AI to crowdsource people’s unwanted clothing. Ahluwalia puts out a call out for a certain type of garment, for example, denim. Users take a photo of their unwanted garment and upload it to the Circulate platform, then we use AI to categorise it and make sure it’s in acceptable condition.
If we accept it, we send the user a prepaid postage label, they send it to us and we use the fabric in our collections. In return they get discount points against products on our website. It allows people to engage with sustainability and with our brand, while also building our community and retaining customers, so it’s been really interesting.
We also partnered with Microsoft to create QR codes to accompany Ahluwalia clothing, so customers can scan them to find out information about their garments and their origins and the story behind the Ahluwalia brand. Growing a business is so much about understanding an opportunity and then seeing how you can create the next opportunity out of it.
Film As an Expression of the Brand and Storytelling
After Joy, the film I made for GucciFest, I was working on a partnership with Dropbox and they wanted to do some sort of event. I said, ‘Why don’t we do a film and I can direct it?’ Which I did. After that, every time I could get funding, I would make a film because I loved it. I loved the storytelling and that I was learning so much about cameras and editing, it was like going back to school in a way.
About a year and a half ago I was approached by Ridley Scott’s Black Dog Film agency – on LinkedIn actually – so random! They’re an agency for directors but also a production company. They said they wanted to talk about my films, so I thought I was walking into a sales meeting where they were going to pitch me to produce the films that I work on for brands like Mulberry.
But instead they said, ‘We see something interesting in your work and we want you to consider signing with us as a film director.’ I couldn’t process it at first. I think especially as a woman, it can feel scary to be a polymath and to step outside of our normal area, like people are going to judge us for it. But I realised then, if I don’t know something, I’m just going to learn it. That’s the thing about being an entrepreneur or a creative; you learn something new every day. I had a really good feeling about the team there, and it turns out I was right.
Since then, Black Dog has produced a short film that I created about Nollywood and Bollywood cinema called Beloved. At the time, my Autumn/Winter 2022 collection was about to come out in the shops, so we created an Ahluwalia Film Festival at Soho House to celebrate the film’s release. We screened it and we had an Ahluwalia pop-up shop and a party – that’s how we also announced my signing with Black Dog. Since then, I’ve directed a music video, plus films for Nike, Levi’s and the Design Museum. Now our studio is based in the Ridley Scott building, a really smart building in Soho, and that all started because of the Gucci commission.
Film has become a big part of what I do and crucial to growing my business.
Surviving the Side-effects of Business Growth
For Ahluwalia the rough patches didn’t come at the very beginning but a few years in. In the beginning, while I was hustling and doing all the designs myself, I didn’t have expectations and I didn’t have major responsibilities. If it didn’t work, it would be fine because I could just do something else.
What changes when your business gets bigger is that you have responsibility for more things. You have employees, your premises, your stores and customers – there are a lot more things. In my opinion, that feels like more pressure than the beginning. You also have less time to do the things you really love and make you stay creative.
We’re only human beings and we can’t be perfect all the time. Hard and heartbreaking things can come up in your personal life, and you still have to turn up to work and be everyone’s boss. As a team, we’re quite open about things going on in our lives so we can be aware if there are people not able to turn up for work as their best selves and we can compensate for it to make sure the job gets done.
Takeaway
Building a group of loyal and supportive people around you is absolutely key. As an entrepreneur, this means both your internal team, external advisors and collaborators and your wider network of friends, family and mentors. You will learn from them, as they’ll learn from you, and when times get tough, their support will be crucial, and you’ll be able to do the same for them. It’s a truly virtuous circle and also great for your happiness and wellbeing.
Building Strong Foundations
Life is full of curveballs. Some of them are fantastic and some of them are horrible and hideous. I think if you want to be a creative and an entrepreneur, it’s so important to have your people, to know who they are. When a close family relative of mine suddenly passed away recently, a close friend and also a colleague who did sales drove to my house, which was also where my studio was. I couldn’t do anything. He packed all the orders for the stores and got me through. People help lift you up. When I’ve had friends having a hard time, I do the same for them. It’s not for the faint-hearted, having your own business. That’s why it’s really important to make sure you have a good support network.
It’s also crucial that you’ve laid down a strong foundation for your business, including key systems and processes, so that others can come in and help you keep things going based on the template for your business you’ve created. You’ve got to be prepared to roll with the punches.
Photo: Ron Timehin / Courtesy of Carolyn Dailey
PASSING ON LESSONS LEARNED
TEAM MEMBERS ARE CRUCIAL
I work so closely with people who are not on our internal team – for example, with our Ahluwalia stylist and casting director. They’re such a crucial part of the brand, they’ve helped literally to define an ‘Ahluwalia person.’ And I couldn’t have made the brand without my hugely talented internal team. No person is an island, and it’s also so important to give your team credit whenever you can.
WALK BEFORE YOU CAN RUN
I’d love to expand into new areas right now, like homeware. But I know I don’t have the bandwidth at the moment. So I’ll be disciplined about keeping my focus on Ahluwalia’s menswear, womenswear and our new footwear – and keep evaluating when it makes sense to expand to other areas.
INTERROGATE YOUR VISION
Really understand and hone what your point of view on anything is. What is your creative point of view and what sets your idea apart from anyone else’s? Do you like the colour red? If not, why? Really think about it deeply.
LEARN EVERY PART OF YOUR BUSINESS AS WELL AS YOUR CRAFT
Another piece of advice, more practically, is to understand and learn every part of your business. For example, if you want to be a fashion designer, figure out production, figure out social media, figure out fabric sourcing. Learn every single element that you can in your practice so that when you’re running a team, you know how to guide them but you also know what they shouldn’t be doing. Make sure you’re aware of the specific skill sets that it takes to run your business. If you don’t know about a specific area already, do some work experience, take a course or find a mentor to learn from.
When you start, the buck stops with you: you’ve got to do everything. At the beginning, I was designing, pattern cutting, sewing, packing, shipping. That’s fine, I can sew, I can make a pair of jeans. But at some point you need others to take over those areas – the key is to know the craft yourself.
BE RELENTLESS ABOUT TRACKING SPENDING
On the purely business side, at the beginning, check all of your spending. What are you spending and why? That three metres of fabric, what is it for? The development of a custom thing, or is it for an actual season? Track all of the money because when things start growing more quickly you’ll need to make your budgets. And without the knowledge of what you spent before, it’s really hard to move forward.
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Source: Fashionista.com
