There aren’t many places outside the big cities for fashionistas to get their fill of high fashion, but thankfully for the residents of Matara, they have Spark.

Located in Kingswatte, Matara, Spark was opened in 2012 by Kanchana and her brother. New to the fashion industry, they decided to set up an online store as well to promote the brand.

As you are based in Matara, how do you manage to compete with other stores in Colombo?  

To run the online business, the most important thing is to be honest about what we do.  So when it comes to online shopping, we guarantee to give items worth what you have paid for. But having a store in Matara is quite difficult than Colombo.

We are new to Matara and the target market is much less but, we are getting really good compliments from our present customers.

They are really happy about the service we provide them. Most of our customers have requested us to open a store in Colombo. I want to let them know that SPARK will come to Colombo one day.

Describe the different collections you have?

Our target crowd is young girls between the age of 16- 25. We’re trying to get unique and high street fashion trends in to SPARK so we sell different collections of vintage jewelleries, clothes, shoes and handbags. We are known for selling vintage jewelleries in Matara.

Also we have different collections of clothes, shoes and handbags at the Matara store for our regular customers. But if you looking for something fancy we advise you to visit our online store on facebook. 

How do you select each piece and where are they sourced from?

All clothes, shoes and handbags at the store are imported from Bangkok and some of them from China as well. All the jewelleries are imported from china. My brother or I will travel sometimes to select items.

Do you offer any special deals/discounts?

We offer 10% for our regular customer when they buy a certain number of clothing items. And last New Year season we gave 10% off for every customer.

It’s the same for online customers because the shipping cost is less when you buy more items together. I must say our jewelleries are extremely affordable compared to other stores

How does the sale and delivery procedure work for online orders?

All you have to do is send a message saying the size you want and your contact details. You can pay us by depositing money into our account, once payment is cleared, we will process your order.

It will take at least 21 days to deliver to you. If you want to order something from Matara store then you will have to pay for postage cost. It will take at least 3 days to deliver by special post.

How have sales been since opening and what has the customer feedback been like? 

Customers are really happy about the service we provided and they trust us a lot. That is very important to continue the business.  Customers who visit our store always compliment the collections we have. They always say that we have something unique from other shops in Matara.

We plan to start doing gents item as well but I’m not really sure about when it’s going to be. But you can count on that. SPARK always wants to do something UNIQUE.

Visit Spark at:  www.facebook.com/spark.lk

By Lake Argent