Hand-crafted approach is designed to floor you

The Life: The women entrepreneurs behind Modula-Conceptio talk about how their boutique business has fared over the past five years.

Sabina Sinha, left, and Kavita Bahadur, have been doing business together for five years. Satish Kumar / The National

Modula-Conceptio is a Dubai boutique that sells designer furniture and art, as well as hand-crafted resin flooring, which is popular in other parts of the world but relatively new to the Middle East. The owners, Sabina Sinha and Kavita Bahadur, look back on five years in business:

Who are your target customers?

Sabina: We've done full residential homes [for homeowners] who like a contemporary twist. Overseas, we've done hotel lobbies, offices. It's quite a mixed bag of people. The person who comes to us is someone who wants drama and something unique if they want to create a specialised area.

Why did you start this venture together?

Kavita: Both of us are very passionate about design, and we felt that in today's day and age where everything is man-made and machine-made, we were bringing alive a tradition of hand-made flooring.

Which aspects of your business were affected by the economic downturn?

Sabina: We didn't feel the downturn much because people who were doing their homes and had money still wanted this beautiful product. I don't think they hesitated. Maybe in the commercial sector we did have a small setback.

Kavita: We did. But we also did a very large hotel project in Syria during the economic downturn. If you're talking about big flooring companies that are doing mass production, we're not doing mass production in that sense.

How have you tried to keep up with changing consumer tastes since you opened about five years ago?

Kavita: We have never been trend-oriented ourselves. Our biggest challenge has always been introducing new materials to the market. Resin and hand-blown stuff has been around in Europe and the US for many, many years. But here, somehow, luxury has always been associated with limestone, marble, granite. We have been trying to convince people they can have something that's equally luxurious and innovative.

How do you market the product?

Kavita: People tend to find us. We've done a bit of talking to designers, clients, artists and companies.

Seems like it must be a pretty easy business to run, then, if customers just come to you.

Kavita: It has not been easy. It always appears it's running efficiently.

Sabina: Efficient we have been. It has definitely been a challenge to promote this product in a much wider sense. Yes, we're getting there. [Our goal is] to let them [clients] know about another beautiful, colourful floor.

Have there been other challenges?

Kavita: The usual things that women go through, I think: setting up work and getting our licences.

Sabina: And all our paperwork to get started. Not the business aspects, but the logistics of it.