Indian designer pushes past setbacks

The odds seemed monumentally against textile designer Harshita Lohia's realizing her entrepreneurial ambitions.

For starters, there was her father, patriarch of a conservative Hindu family in North India, where arranged marriages are common and young women are encouraged to work on babies, not business plans. Then, when Lohia was a junior at Moore College of Art & Design, a bicyclist struck her, breaking both her hands.

Five years later, fire destroyed not only her Lower Makefield home, but Lohia's entire design portfolio, putting an end to a promising job opportunity and the work visa that was to come with it.

"I never felt down," she said. "I said to myself, 'This too shall pass.' I never believe in giving up. I am a fighter. Life moves on."

Persistence is a common trait among entrepreneurs, and Lohia's was nurtured by mentors at Moore who remained advisers, cheerleaders - extended family, even - long after their student, daughter of a tea magnate, graduated. (Her grandmother, in failing health, had demanded that her son allow his daughter to come here to study and fulfill her business dreams.)

Harshita Designs Inc., launched in 2009, is quickly becoming an acclaimed name in the artisan-fashion world. Its wearable works of art - hand-dyed, textured, and printed silk scarves, neckties, shawls, tunics, and jackets - sell in boutiques, museums, and galleries throughout the United States, a country Lohia fully embraced in June, when she became a naturalized citizen.

"Since I was employing American citizens to work for me, I wanted to be an American citizen myself," Lohia, 33, said last week at her home, headquarters of her studio and company. The property had to be rebuilt after the electrical fire burned unrelentingly that November 2005 evening as she helplessly looked on.

Two days later, she was to have had an interview expected to secure her a design job with a major retailer and the working papers she needed to stay in the United States once her academic pursuits (the bachelor's degree at Moore and a master's in digital printing at Philadelphia University) concluded. But in the design world, portfolios are key to showing a body of work, start to finish.

With hers lost to flames and water, Lohia did not get the job.

Moore came to the rescue, offering a post in recruiting and continuing education that Lohia held until she brought Harshita Designs to life. That was soon after her husband, Mayank Bansal, an information-technology specialist from India she married in 2005, became a citizen.

Instrumental in getting Lohia the Moore job was the college's president, Happy Fernandez, whom Lohia praised as "a very big inspiration in my life and my career."

Fernandez, who died in January, seemed always to be wearing a Harshita Designs scarf.

Her husband, Dick Fernandez, so frequently wore Lohia's ties - and was complimented on them - that "when people said they liked the ties, I'd hand them her business card," he said last week. "It happened all the time."

Dinners at Lohia's house always included visits to the studio, where she showed off her latest work with "ever-new enthusiasm," Dick Fernandez said. "Her joy in her work I'm always impressed with."

Others' joy in it impresses Lohia: "The most surprising is someone who wants to spend the money to buy a Harshita scarf [retailing for $65 to $500] and understands the value of it."

Sales are growing 60 percent a year, with between 8,000 and 10,000 items sold last year, Lohia said.

All works are printed on high-quality silk in India, where she employs 20 to execute her designs, which combine delicate flowers and foliage with hard-edge architecture.

All sewing is done in Philadelphia. Lohia typically has four to five employees working at her studio, which doubles as the company's warehouse, to process and fill orders.

That is expected to change in six to eight months, when Lohia plans to move all merchandise to a yet-to-be-found warehouse, where order fulfillment will be automated with bar coding. She envisions that, and the likely addition of a marketing team, will give her more time to design.

For now, she's preparing for an Oct. 25 trunk show at the Barnes Foundation. She heads to India on Monday with her parents, who have been visiting since July 8, then continues to Paris and Dubai, where she will seek design inspiration from the architecture.

The man who was initially against his only daughter's moving so far away from home now credits her with opening U.S. markets to his Chamong Tea company. At trade shows, he sells her garments at his booth.

"In the tea world, she's known more than me in the U.S.," Ashok Kumar Lohia said with a laugh and a look of pride.

Entrepreneur Harshita Lohia talks about her apparel design business, Harshita Designs Inc. www.inquirer.com/harshitaEndText