At Bengal By Hand, Niharika Mathur sees the customer relationship as a connection between the person choosing a textile and the person making it. Her approach brings a wider purpose to everyday service: helping buyers appreciate the work, while creating reasons for them to return.
A customer sends a budget and leaves the choice of saree to the person selling it. It is a small exchange, but a significant expression of trust. The customer expects more than a product within a price range. They believe someone understands their preferences well enough to choose on their behalf.
Niharika Mathur describes having such conversations through WhatsApp with Bengal By Hand’s customers. Some relationships have become familiar enough for buyers to ask her to select a piece and send it to them. For Niharika Mathur, Two-Time Founder and Customer Experience, Operations and Strategy Officer, Bengal By Hand, these moments reveal what personal attention can build over time.
They also raise a larger possibility. If customers develop a lasting relationship with handmade textiles, their return can mean another opportunity for an artisan’s work to find a buyer. The relationship begins with a preference. It can grow into an appreciation of the people and skills behind it.
That connection is central to Niharika Mathur’s reason for entering the business. She describes coming into the sector without a background in textiles, motivated by the opportunity to connect artisans more directly with customers and help them receive the price they seek for their work. When asked whom the business considers its customer - the buyer or the maker - she includes both. “So, to be very honest, both are our customers,” she says. A business serving these two groups has to understand two kinds of value. The buyer needs confidence in the product and the experience of purchasing it. The artisan needs their skill to be recognised through a commercially meaningful exchange.
Bengal By Hand’s role, as Niharika Mathur describes it, is to bring those expectations together. The textile becomes the point of connection. Its design attracts the customer, while its making offers a deeper reason to appreciate it.
Helping the customer see more
A customer can recognise a colour they love without knowing much about the work behind it. They may be drawn to a pattern, a texture or the way a saree will look when worn. Those are sufficient reasons to begin a purchase. Mathur wants the experience to leave room for further discovery.
Who made the piece? What skill does it carry? Why does its individuality matter?
She describes introducing artisans through the brand’s digital storytelling. She is also considering including an artisan’s story and signature with the packaging. The idea would give the customer a personal reference for the work arriving at their home. A signature could acknowledge the individual behind the textile, making authorship part of the experience of receiving it.
That is a meaningful design opportunity. Packaging can protect and present a product; it can also help someone understand what they have chosen.
In this proposed format, opening the parcel would introduce a person as well as a piece. The value would lie in the specificity. An artisan’s story can help the buyer connect craftsmanship with an individual’s practice, rather than encountering it only as a broad description.
Individuality is already in the making
For Bengal By Hand, communicating that quality is part of the customer experience. The buyer needs a clear understanding of what makes the piece individual and what they can expect to receive. This is where design and service become closely connected. An appealing image invites attention. An explanation helps the customer understand the product. The delivered piece gives them an opportunity to assess that explanation for themselves.
The experience is strongest when all three support one another. She also describes customers who understand the time involved in handloom and appreciate the process behind the work. Her account suggests that a business can build a relationship around informed expectations.
The responsibility remains with the brand to communicate clearly. Respect for craftsmanship
For Niharika Mathur, Two-Time Founder and Customer Experience, Operations and Strategy Officer, Bengal By Hand emphasises that listening becomes valuable when it changes what the business does next.
Trust can change how people shop
The customers who ask Niharika Mathur to choose for them illustrate how a relationship can develop.
Initially, someone may need detailed information about a piece. With experience, they can become more comfortable with the seller’s judgement. The transaction begins to require less uncertainty because earlier interactions have provided reasons for confidence.
That confidence carries responsibility. A recommendation has to remain attentive to the individual, rather than relying only on the familiarity of the relationship.
When Mathur identifies the quality she most wants to bring to the experience, her answer is concise. “I honestly feel human connect.” In her account, direct conversations help establish that connection. WhatsApp becomes a place to discuss preferences and continue an interaction over time. She strongly associates this approach with customers returning.
“Honesty and transparency. That has worked for us from day one. We have, we have a repeat customer base of about 35% and above,” she says. The figure is her account of the business’s repeat customer base; the interview does not specify its measurement period or methodology. It offers an indication of the continuing relationships she describes, without establishing how much any single service practice contributed to them.
Her emphasis is on earning another conversation through the experience of the previous one.
The wider meaning of a repeat purchase
For an artisan-led business, a returning customer can have significance beyond the next order. Continued demand can create further opportunities for skilled work. A buyer who understands a craft may become more interested in its variations, the people practising it and the pieces they make next.
Niharika Mathur wants customers to feel involved in that continuity. Her ambition is for appreciation to become sustained participation in a market for handmade work. “Allow people to appreciate the skill, the craft, the effort,” she says.
It is a hopeful view of loyalty, with an important commercial foundation. Customers need products they value and experiences they trust. Artisans need viable opportunities to keep working. The relationship has to serve both for the intention to endure. Mathur’s proposed inclusion of artisan stories and signatures would make that connection more visible. Her customer conversations are an attempt to make it more personal.
As the business grows, preserving this attention will be a challenge in its own right. She acknowledges the tension between direct involvement and scale. The question ahead is how to carry the qualities of a thoughtful conversation into a larger operation: understanding preferences, communicating accurately and responding with care.
A customer gives the brand another opportunity to choose well. An artisan gains another opportunity for their work to be appreciated. A familiar purchase can become a continuing interest in the people who make it possible.
The customer who sends a budget and asks Mathur to select a saree may simply be expressing trust in her taste. Handled with care, that trust can help create a place for someone else’s skill in their life.
Disclaimer: All data points and statistics are attributed to published research studies and verified market research. All quotes are either sourced directly or attributed to public statements.