Mayfair Stylewear: Turning the golden fibre into wardrobe staple

Around the world, environmentally conscious fashion choices are gaining more and more momentum. Designers and enterprises in Bangladesh too are making their mark in this movement. Meet SM Sajjad Hossain, the Chief Executive of Mayfair Stylewear, who has brought a blazer made from jute to promote jute-diversified products.

A praiseworthy enterprise, his company is already bagging clients who want to minimise climate change impacts due to fast fashion.

An advertising professional turned fashionpreneur, SM Sajjad Hossain quit his job during the pandemic and decided to dedicate his full time to his new venture of making jute blazers commercially. 

He believes that many people are doing jute diversified products and they are happy with making jute bags, while the textile mills are happy with making fabric with jute yarn. 

"But I was always pondering over how to  make something new with the fabric; how to create value for my customer," said SM Sajjad Hossain.   

To date, he has sold more than 100 blazers among people, by adopting an informal marketing strategy. Bangladesh Cricket Broad bought 40 pieces of blazers. He sold the rest of the blazers through personal networking. 

SM Sajjad Hossain, an elected director of Dhaka Club, said that his main marketing place is Dhaka Club, where he meets fashion-conscious consumers. He said these exclusive blazers are mostly for affluent buyers and for this reason he has adopted a niche marketing strategy.  

The price of a single blazer is around Tk14,000. He also sells vests whose price is around Tk7,000. 

Interestingly, the blazers are not readymade. The blazers are made on an order basis. If any customer places an order, the tailor pays three visits to the customer's place or office. At first, a tailor goes to the customer's place to take clothing measurements, the second visit is for trial and during the third visit, the product is finally delivered to the customer. 

"You know there is a travel cost and time, so I will never be able to make the blazer inexpensive," said SM Sajjad Hossain.   

He developed his first product– a jute-based blazar– in 2017 and began to go to different places wearing the blazer. Upon inquiring, when people came to know about the materials, they were interested to place orders. 

"At one point, I sat with the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB). They liked the product and wanted to buy the blazer for their players and officials," said SM Sajjad. 

The cricket players went to Australia to play in the T20 World Cup last year. The whole team wore his blazer. The blazer has been on display at the Dubai Expo 2020 too. 

The fabric of the blazer is made of 60 per cent jute and 40 per cent cotton. They are made at his factory in Malibag in the capital. 

SM Sajjad Hossain is now planning to take this environment-friendly product to the international market under the Mayfair brand.