I interviewed Qurrat-ul-Ain Farrukh, the co-founder of Urban Truck Art, a Pakistani home goods store that makes products using the cultural style of “truck art” and uses this style in all sorts of home goods, ranging from tissue box to coffee table to chopping board. 

I asked her what inspired her to start this brand. She said that her husband is passionate about Pakistani culture. 2 years ago during the pandemic, he met some truck art artists. From there, she and her husband got the idea of doing fusion in home decor with truck art. They started the company with 4-5 products and now have 300+ products, and 3 warehouses. She mentioned that it took time and financial investment to figure out the “product-market fit”. They did research and development and worked on product development. This process took a year. They learned more by launching products and getting responses.

She also mentioned that initially, people who liked truck art would purchase Urban Truck Art’s products but now, even people who originally did not like truck art purchase products, given that supply has created its own demand in the market. Given the good quality of the products and it being difficult to find good quality truck art products due to lack of quality control in local stores, with time, these products became trendy. She mentioned that their manufacturing is in-house, in order to avoid quality issues which poses a hindrance in selling of cultural products and crafts. 

After hearing about her work, I asked Ms. Farrukh, “What advice would you give to people who wish to contribute to the reclamation/promotion of Pakistan’s culture/Urdu language through cultural products?”

Her response to this question was, “You have to make it happen and not listen to what others say, it will take hard work and persistence. Good quality cultural products with a contemporary touch is a growing niche and people should definitely work on it! We often under-estimate the size of our own Pakistani domestic market.” 

In order to learn the response from the diaspora/international community, I asked her the percentage of people ordering from abroad?

She said that 15% of the orders are placed from abroad, the main constraint being high shipping cost. This percentage could be higher if the shipping cost was lower. As an alternative, often people buy when they come to Pakistan from abroad. She also mentioned that Urban Truck Art’s resellers take things abroad and sell them in order to reduce shipping cost at the customer’s end. She mentioned that customers are emotionally attached to them, given their unique spin on cultural products.

She also mentioned that they have done some projects that contributed to representing Pakistan’s truck art culture abroad. For instance, one of their clients got a grocery store painted in Australia. In some of their other big projects with embassies, they have gotten positive reviews from foreigners which reflect the role of culture in representation and connecting people to identity.

It is inspiring to see niche companies like these in making culture commonplace and accessible in an exciting way. It gives reason to believe that this is an untapped market which can serve as a way to allow Pakistanis or non-Pakistanis alike to celebrate Pakistani culture!

Yesterday, I traveled to the capital of the country, Islamabad from my hometown of Faisalabad. Being one of the more diverse cities with a population of expats, Islamabad has a lot of handicraft stores targeted towards a domestic as well as international audience. My objective was to travel to different handicraft stores to get a sense of what is in the market, what sells, and where there is room for improvement. 

My first stop was the “Imagine” store in Central Islamabad. There, I met the owner whose family has been in the handicraft industry for three generations. I told him that I was visiting the store for my Masters research, then asked him questions and got the following information.

He told me that the footfall at the store had significantly decreased since the pandemic. He mentioned that the footfall used to be 30-40 people per day (with a majority population being Chinese) and now it is 10-12 visitors per day. The owner mentioned that international travelers have reduced since the pandemic, so even though domestic customers are still coming, lack of foreign tourists has resulted in the sale of handicrafts to reduce. 

He pointed out that one of the main issues is quality control, with no two products being uniform and the excuse from the craftsmen being that these products are handmade and are not consistent in their size due to that reason. He concluded by saying that we need to make export quality things for them to sell. According to him, there is no significant government support helping this very important industry that is struggling. He said that consumers have to  

I spoke to other craftsmen at four other shops who verified these concerns. Another craftsman from a local, unnamed shop added a very important point saying that there needs to be a significant push from consumers as well as from the producers of handicrafts asking for quality control. He also added that products need to be made in contemporary fashion for people from this generation to really like them.

After reflecting on market research that I conducted, I concluded that there is an unmet need in the handicraft industry for good quality, cultural products that have a contemporary touch to them. My next step now is to search for brands that are modern, exciting, and cultural and see what work they are doing.

Given the existential crisis that my research question was going through, I was unsure about what next steps to pursue while I marinated on my career choices, given that I want my research to equip me with skills for the workplace, ideally. However, in the interest of being on the lookout of opportunities that would help me iterate on my question, I continued to take steps like scheduling networking chats with potential stakeholders. In the few weeks that it took from initiation to the execution of the networking chats, my research question had evolved so much that I feared sounding too confused about my research interests during networking chats. 

I am happy to say that I still went ahead and gained a lot from a networking meeting I that had in June over coffee during which I was referred to certain stakeholders of interest that I will now reach out to. In my humble experience, the process of networking, just like the process of action research, can often be non-linear, where events such as networking chats may either greatly contribute to the final outcome or not at all (at least not directly). 

After reflecting on recently done secondary research and recent networking events that forced me to ask myself important questions, I am happy to say that I have finally found my true area of interest. Currently, my research question is:

How can Pakistani handicrafts be better marketed and promoted?

The journey of iterating not only my research question but also my career plans continues to be a journey of being subject to many confusions before getting further clarity. Throughout this journey of iterations, the constant reminder from MA Applied Imagnation’s faculty regarding focusing on the process more than the outcome was very helpful and much needed.

Rather than focusing on the industry that I eventually want to contribute in, I started thinking about what skills will make me a better fit for contributing to the cultural/handicraft industry in Pakistan in the long term. This made me ask myself questions that are answered in the visual below:

1. What type of roles can I see myself professionally pursuing?

• What are my areas of competency versus my areas of excellence? I have grouped these two together for now as I am still reflecting on the answer to this question.

• What is it that I do not like to do and what is it that I do not like to do but would love to improve on?

While desk work is something that I do not want to do a lot of (but am competent at), the areas mentioned in bold are areas that I am not competent at but am willing to somewhat improve on. I believe this exercise is very helpful so I can figure out what skills I want to develop and how I can potentially do so through my project for this degree. This is why I believe it is useful to share this in a blog post.

Right now, my priority is to develop a transferrable skillset, irrespective of the industry where I begin my career in. I would rather be doing a role that allows me to grow (being impartial towards the industry) than working in a role that I do not enjoy in my industry of choice. Ideally, and perhaps eventually, I might be doing what I love in the sector that I care about! 

As someone who writes poetry and believes in the power of words in serving as a tool for broadening people’s horizons, I was internally confused between wanting to do something that dealt on the level of “changing perspectives through spoken word” versus creating real world impact by somehow engaging with Pakistan’s culture in a more tangible manner. While I knew that I would find the latter to be more fulfilling, I was not sure how I could do the latter while being based abroad.

As I pondered upon these questions in my mind, I went to the Museums and Heritage conference in Olympia, London on 11^th May, 2022 to see what work organisations in this space are doing and to make connections with potential stakeholders. After speaking to many people and organisations at this conference, I came to learn that a fair amount of work that goes into jobs in this sector is technical, such as interactive storytelling through virtual reality and augmented reality, software for museums, business analytics roles that consult such organisations on ticket pricing and other business-related decisions. All of this made me wonder where I fit in this piece of puzzle, if anywhere at all.

It wasn’t that I was lacking self-belief and questioning my ability to tap into a competitive industry, rather I was pragmatically thinking about what part of this work would I actually enjoy doing? For instance, as much as it is important to do so, I am not passionate about working on storing and moving cultural objects and artefacts, and I am not equipped to do the technical/data-heavy jobs which means that I am not fit for a decent number of jobs in this industry.  

Earlier that week, I went to the British Asian film festival on 9^th May, 2022 for the same reasons – to see what is out there and meeting potential stakeholders and experts through in-person networking. I was underwhelmed by seeing that there were not many people there. Going to these events and getting a reality check combined with asking myself the difficult but necessary questions about how interested I truly am in this industry and what is it that makes me interested in this industry.

I visited a couple of museums, such as the Victoria & Albert Museum on 8^th May, 2022 and the Postal Museum on 27^th May, 2022. I found myself more excited and engaged in the museums’ stores (which has always been the case, actually) than while reading boards and visiting exhibits in the museums. I was finally able to give words to what deep inside, I always knew, that I enjoyed engaging with the commercial side of culture/heritage/handicrafts more than the other sides of it. 

At the Postal Museum and later at the Wellcome Collection that I visited on 7^th June, 2022, I observed something important about myself. For quite some time, I was confusing what I am passionate about/like to support with what I would like to pursue and professionally add value in. For instance, I am passionate about writing poetry, but I do not want to pursue it as a career. Furthermore, my admiration for interactive storytelling and engaging visuals made me think that that is something I would want to do, only for me to realize that neither do I have the technical skillset for it, nor do I want to develop one. 

The reason why I was now able to give words to all these reflections that had been living and breathing inside of me is because I was becoming accepting of my confusions and “mini failures”. I was letting go of this self-created expectation that I should have absolute clarity on the path forward and hence, stopped feeling defeated by virtue of my confusions. I was starting to understand the phrase, “the journey is the destination” by detaching myself from the destination and focusing on embracing the process and letting my research question/choices evolve.