A frustration.
A family legacy.
And a decision to
fix it properly.
"I had been ordering Pakistani designer wear online for years. It was the same thing each time. I vented to Iqbal about it, not expecting a business plan. What I didn't know was what his family had been doing for thirty years."
Waniya Rajpoot, Co-FounderWaniya Rajpoot had been ordering Pakistani designer wear from various online retailers for years. It was the same thing each time: a polished website, reasonable price, and then, when the parcel arrived, something that bore only a passing resemblance to what she had ordered. Fabrics listed as pure silk chiffon or organza that were clearly synthetic blends. Embroidery that looked hand-worked in the photo but was printed directly onto the fabric. Colours so far from the listed reference that she had to question whether the retailer had shipped the correct item at all.
She raised it with her close friend Iqbal Khan. Not for the first time, and not expecting anything particular to come of it. What she did not know was that his family had been in Pakistan's cloth and garment manufacturing industry for over three decades.
His family's relationships reached inside fashion house supply chains: not just brand sales teams, but the people who knew which production batches met spec, which distributors cut corners, and which stockists were selling authentic pieces versus grey-market sourced replicas.
Growing up around Faisalabad mills means understanding thread count, dye bath consistency, and the physical difference between hand-worked zardozi and machine-stitched approximations. Not as a learned qualification. Something absorbed over years.
Pakistan's top fashion houses are selective about who they grant official stockist status to. Iqbal's family name opened relationships that a cold approach from a new company would not have reached as quickly, or at all.
Counterfeit Kanwal Malik is a documented problem in the UK and US reseller market. Replica Maria B, Baroque, and Sobia Nazir pieces circulate through unverified sellers with copied swing tags and inferior embroidery. Knowing what the real production chain looks like, from Faisalabad mills to Lahore showrooms, means we know what a genuine piece looks like before it is even listed on our site. That knowledge cannot be faked or acquired from a product photo.
When Waniya described the problem, Iqbal already understood the supply chain failure behind it. Grey-market operators with no direct brand relationships were sourcing garments from unauthorised middlemen, or copying product listings from official designer websites and shipping whatever approximation they could procure. The customer had no reliable way to tell the difference until the parcel arrived. He had seen the same thing from the other side of the supply chain.
The idea that became Kifat came from that conversation. Not a formal pitch. Just the recognition that Waniya's direct experience as a repeatedly let-down customer, combined with Iqbal's family connections inside Pakistan's garment industry, combined into something neither could do alone.
Using his family connections to get through the right doors, Iqbal led the founding vendor visit campaign: a systematic tour through Lahore, Karachi, and Faisalabad, meeting every brand the team was considering. They assessed each one against a fixed set of criteria: production authenticity, fabric specification accuracy, embroidery consistency, dye batch reliability, and fulfilment integrity. Not every brand that was approached made it through. Several well-known names did not clear the bar.
The brands that cleared the criteria became Kifat's founding supplier network. Official sourcing agreements were signed. Reference catalogues established for every collection. Authentic pieces now ship direct from those fashion houses to our UK warehouse, where every item is checked before it is photographed, listed, or dispatched. The authentication process Iqbal developed from his industry knowledge was formalised into the standard that every garment still passes today.
Kifat operates from both the UK and the United States because the communities we serve are split across both countries. A single base creates unnecessary delivery delays and customs complications for half our customers. We ship worldwide from whichever base is most efficient for each order. The official sourcing agreements we hold cover supply to both markets directly.