Three
generations
of cloth.
A house, in the sense of a household.
My grandfather opened his first warehouse in the autumn of 1985, on a narrow lane off Rail Bazaar in Gujranwala. He had three looms, two assistants, and a fourteen-rupee ledger from the stationers across the way. The first cloth he sold was a bolt of raw silk — slubbed, the colour of weak tea — to a tailor in Lahore who paid him in two installments.
He used to say that a fabric house is not a business, but a household: a roof under which generations of weavers, dyers, finishers and traders gather to make something neither of them could make alone. Sixty years later, we still believe him.
We are now in the third generation. The looms have multiplied. The lane has widened. The ledger is, mercifully, now digital. But the household stands — and the cloth that leaves it is still folded by hand, still tagged by name, and still cut, in our family’s view, from the same single bolt.
Fifty-eight years, in marks.
Sheikh Shaukat opens a single-room warehouse off Rail Bazaar, Faisalabad. Three power-looms, one finishing table. First sale: a bolt of slubbed raw silk to a Lahore tailor.
A buyer from Dubai walks in unannounced and leaves with four bolts of organza. The first export ledger is opened. By the year's end, the house has shipped to seven countries.
Adnan Nadeem takes the warp from his father. Viscose and high-twist chiffon are added to the loom plan. The first major bridal house places a standing order.
A second branch opens in Karachi's Saddar district, closer to the port. The Karachi atelier becomes the trade-facing arm of the house; Faisalabad remains the weaving heart.
The house adopts GOTS certification across its mulberry supply, signs a third-party audit on labour practices, and moves to low-impact reactive dyes across the catalogue.
Talha Nadeem joins the house, completing the third generation of family stewardship. The trade desk is digitised; the inspection card stays handwritten.
412 active weaves on file. 34 export markets. Bridal, couture and ready-to-wear ateliers from Karachi to Lahore to Islamabad. A single, unfussy promise: the cloth in the bolt is the cloth on the swatch.
Six hands, before yours.
Every metre that leaves our warehouse has passed through six pairs of hands — and at least one inspection against natural daylight. This is the path of a bolt, from cocoon to courier.
Mulberry from Punjab and Khyber. Raw rayon from a single mill in Karachi. We buy fibre by name, not by lot.
Twisted to count. Loose-twist for chiffon, tight-twist for organza. Slub left intact for raw silk.
A network of family-held looms across Faisalabad — power for volume, hand for nuance, the same workshops for forty years.
Low-impact reactive dyes, in audited dye-houses. Custom orders matched to Pantone TCX, lot-numbered for repeats.
Washed, calendered, washed again. Inspected against daylight by a single finisher, who signs the card.
Hand-folded, paper-wrapped, jute-tied. Shipped DHL Express or FOB Karachi, accompanied by chain-of-custody.
The looms we keep, and the names we keep them under.
We do not own every loom from which our cloth comes. We partner with eleven family-held workshops across Faisalabad and one in Karachi. We have named, by hand, every one of them.
Come visit the household.
Private appointments are available at our Karachi atelier and Faisalabad warehouse. Tea is taken at four.