Being fierce in bringing out a change is rarely portrayed by any individual. Those with unique ideologies and clear vision, address the need of innovations and make it happen. One such leader is Fatima Al Shirawi. Meet the Founder of The Gracious F, who led her company in achieving many milestone en route to success. Her mission on giving back to the community set her apart from the rest of competition.
CIO LOOK admire such leaders and appreciates their contribution in the evolution of color consultancy sector. And feels pride to feature Fatima in its special edition “Elite League of Innovative Entrepreneurs, 2019.”
Here is her story:
Her passion to coach, teach and spread knowledge is what made her a leader, in the field as niche as color consultancy, one of its kind, especially in the middle east, her journey started off as a one man show where she started her career by visiting clients offices, residences and working from shared office pursing her degrees abroad. This experience and hardship have kept her grounded with one main goal, share and teach her team same knowledge and support them by mentoring them in their growth.
Even though color consultancy is a niche, it is applicable to all industries and sectors, currently two main poles of the business are Individual Color Solutions and Corporate Color Solutions. Individual Solutions cover personal sessions and Feng Shui and Corporate cover from Branding, Interior, Public Relations & Events, Luxury Retail, government entities and training. Every client that walks into The Gracious F office, usually comes with unique requests even within the same industry, example a Luxury Brand will request re branding project through Color psychology and another luxury brand will require Training for their teams through in house program – COLOUR MATRIX, applicable to all Luxury Retail & E-commerce Industry.
She states that crucial traits every innovative entrepreneur should possess are the following, passion, eagerness to learn something new every day, a lot of research, and keep in mind that one should always be humble.
She advices every individual to always adapt your services to the market demand, and always try to create an unique customer experience by upgrading your services constantly, in her case the gracious of maintains one on one color sessions. However, its booked online but for workshops or training a lot of the sessions are via webinars to cater to larger audience. Always work in a segment that is your passion and your devoted towards it, as you will excel, and remember, no matter how niche or out the box, if you believe your service or product is good and makes difference to society never give up on it and use the immense amount of information and research available to come up with the best success strategy.
While addressing her challenges, Fatima states that the first block is usually understanding your product or service and thus creating the brand loyalty. Competition these days is very high but if you maintain the quality of your product or service and as mentioned before innovative and upgrade to the follow the target trends your business will easily set off towards success. Unfortunately, in these days the businesses lose their credibility due to not paying to quality innovation and only focusing on design and pricing strategies.
Through investing in quality innovation one can easily boost his/her growth. And, this can obtained by following the digital trend of online courses, readings, coaching and constantly developing her skills not only in her industry but by learning other skill sets such as business, leadership, self-development and many more.
In her future prospects she says, recently she has created a program for Retail and E/commerce firms the COLOUR MATRIX and future goal is to have this implemented in all Retail and E/commerce organizations globally. The color matrix is a cheat cheat in understanding human behavior and preferences through color psychology.
About the Company
The Gracious F is the leading colour solutions consultancy in GCC, dedicated to assist people and organizations benefiting through the power of Colour Science and Psychology. Established in 2008, based in Dubai, The Gracious F has assisted a variety of individuals and businesses and holds a Portfolio of national and international organizations. Its vision is to help both individuals and organizations achieve their ambitions, dreams and goals, through the support of color psychology. For individuals, it helps in reducing stress and anxiety meanwhile for organizations, it increases commercial awareness, enhance motivation, increase productivity, and becoming a brand.
The company is successfully combining color psychology in all spectrums of individual re-branding and self-development, to businesses that are looking to enhance their awareness and strategy through color solutions in branding & marketing, Luxury Retail training, PR, Workshops or residential and corporate interior design.
