House of Fashions

House of Fashions House of Fashions House of Fashions

House of Fashions is Sri Lanka’s premier fashion landmark – the ultimate shopping experience. The beautiful nine-story building is the largest single owner retail store in the entirety of South Asia. Of course there are some bigger shopping malls in various places in South Asia. However, these are all rented out to or co-owned by a number of smaller stores, none of which alone are as large as House of Fashions. However to get to know this shopping giant better and capture its essence, its important to understand its history.

The Beginnings

House of Fashions was the brainchild of the couple Preethi and Neelamani Jayawardena. Preethi started his career as a sailor, while Neelamani started off as a Science graduate teaching Biology and Zoology. When Preethi made the decision to change his career path and move into business, he received the fullest support and intelligent input from his wife. Together, they decided to create a clothing store where the common locals in Sri Lanka could buy the best of fashions and follow the trends, all at a very low cost.

House of Fashions was born in 1992, in a tiny 10 foot by 10 foot shop that was rented in the Colombo Plaza. Preethi and Neelamani worked hard and put in their fullest commitment into making the shop a success. They put their heart and soul into caring for their customers, and maintaining their trust; and the customers started caring back. House of Fashions started gaining a loyal customer base. That was not to say that the store did not suffer any setbacks, it did go through hundreds. But sweat, blood and tears of Preethi and Neelamani helped it pull through. Soon House of Fashions started generating enough revenue that they were able to buy a land down Duplication Road in Bambalapitiya, and build a large five story shopping store. It was declared open in 1999 and had 50,000 square feet of floor space, and at the time the likes of it had never been seen in Sri Lanka before. It was compared to the stores in Malaysia and Singapore.

The Growth of House of Fashions

The store continued to grow along with its customer base. More employees were brought into the fold. Preethi and Neelamani started traveling abroad to get the best of fashions at the lowest cost. They did not attempt to make use of this to increase their profit margins. Instead, they transferred that low cost, with only a small profit margin over to their items on the shop floor. The customers loved it. They could get even branded items at the lowest prices. The shop expanded to include gifts, toys, a small selection of household goods, and winter wear. In fact, their winter wear line became so popular that both locals going abroad to colder countries, and foreigners who were visiting, started visiting House of Fashions solely to purchase winter wear.

Even as the popularity of House of Fashions grew, Preethi and Neelamani Jayawardene continued to be the same down-to-earth people they always were. They supporte

About Colombo District

Colombo is the largest city and commercial capital of Sri Lanka. It is located on the west coast of the island and adjacent to Sri Jayewardenepura Kotte, the capital city of Sri Lanka. Colombo is a busy and vibrant city with a mixture of modern life and colonial buildings and ruins and a city population of 647,100.The Colombo Metropolitan Region, defined by the districts of Colombo, Gampaha and Kalutara, has an estimated population of 5,648,000, and covers an area of 3,694.20 km²

Colombo is a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural city. It is the most populous city in Sri Lanka, with 642,163 people living within the city limits. The population of Colombo is a mix of numerous ethnic groups, mainly Sinhalese, Moors and Tamils. There are also small communities of people with Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch, Malay and Indian origins living in the city, as well as numerous European expatriates.

The great majority of Sri Lankan corporations have their head offices in Colombo. Some of the industries include chemicals, textiles, glass, cement, leather goods, furniture, and jewellery. In the city center is located South Asia's second tallest building - The World Trade Centre.

About Western Province

The Western Province is the most densely populated province of Sri Lanka. It is home to the legislative capital Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte as well to Colombo, the nation's administrative and business center. Western Province is divided into 3 main districts called Colombo (642 km²), Gampaha (1,386.6 km²) and Kalutara (1,606 km²) districts. As Sri Lanka's economic hub, all the major local and international corporations have their presence in the city and so do all the major designer and high street retailers, so be ready to indulge in some retail therapy in western province.

Having the highest population in the all the provinces, the almost all the premier educational institutions in the island are located in western province. Universities in the province include the University of Colombo, the University of Sri Jayewardenepura, University of Kelaniya, Open University, Sri Lanka, Buddhist and Pali University of Sri Lanka, General Sir John Kotelawala Defence University and University of Moratuwa .Western province has the largest amount of schools in the country, which includes National, Provincial, Private and International schools.