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
