Apan Jewelers

Apan jewelers, one of the renowned jewelry shops of Bangladesh, started its journey in
1982 by Abdul Ahad, who is the current chairman of the organization. He was in London
for 10 years and after he came back to Bangladesh, he started a small business of Saree
with the capital of one lac. Gradually he saved about 5.5 lac of capital and started the first
showroom in Mouchak market with 120 vori Gold.

Apan Jewelers displays local as well as imported 21 and 22 caret gold jewelry in their all
showrooms. The gold rate is fixed for every organization fixed by Bangladesh Jwelry
Shamitee. Apan Jewelers have some local designers who work in Tatibazar. It is a two way
process. Sometimes the local designer brings designs to them and sometimes they give the
designs to the designers and the designers make them accordingly. Though they do not have
designers of their own under any contract, the designers are so loyal that they never make
the same exclusive designs for any other jewelry firm. The imported gold jewelries are
brought mainly from India and Dubai.

Currently, Apan Jewelers have seven showrooms only in Dhaka. The showrooms are
situated in Mouchak market, Rifles Square, Gulshan D.C.C market, gulshan Suvanstu Imam
Square and two in Baitul Mokarram. It is their family business and each owner from the
family directly handles every showroom. As this type of business requires direct
supervision, they do not expand their showrooms out of Dhaka city.









Organogram of Apan Jewelers
















Chairman
Managing Partner Managing Partner Managing Partner
Director Director
Manager Manager Manager
Sales Executives Sales Executives Sales Executives
Background Of Ms. Kaniz Fatema

The manager selected for the project purpose is Kaniz Fatema who is the director of Apan
Jewelers. All relevant information regarding her personal and professional life is presented
below-

Personal information- Kaniz Fatema was born in Dhaka. She lives in a joint family
of twelve members. She is the elder grand daughter of her paternal family and the
first member to join the business from third generation of the family. According to
Kaniz Fatema, her father has the most contribution behind her todays position.
Besides she is also grateful to her grandfather and grand mother and mother for
bringing up like a boy from the very beginning.

Educational Information- Kaniz Fatema passes her S.S.C in 2004 and H.S.C in
2006 form Viqarunnissa Noon School and College. She joint North South University
for her undergraduate study in 2007. She did her major in Finance and Marketing.
She was graduated from North South University in 2012. She is planning to do her
Masters in the following year in abroad.

Work Experience- After graduating, she joint Transcom in 2012. She worked there
for two months. After that, her father forced her to join the family business and
apply her knowledge here. So in the same year she joint Apan Jewelers. So, she is
working for more than one and an half years. According to her, she has learnt many
things in this small amount if time only because of the inspiration she got from her
father. She started from the very basic job of counting money and gradually her
father made her work in every sector of the showroom to have enough knowledge
about the business.

Extra-Curricular Activities- She mentioned only one extra-curricular activity that
is dancing. In her school and college life she was very much in to it though she was
not member of any cultural groups of NSU.


Breakdown of a typical days work


There are four kinds of managerial work done by a manger of an organization now a
day. Managers normally divide their daily works in terms of traditional management,
Human Resources (HR), communications and networking.

The organization, Apan Jewelers that we have chosen for our project is quite
different than the typical organizations. Here hierarchy is little bit flatter than the traditional
organizations. In this organization directors and managers have to perform and look after lot
of works at a time. This organization does not have too many departments. One director has
to look after all different types of work like financial, HR, and marketing related works,
where as in other organizations we see there are separate managers for each departmental
works.

The director of Apan Jewelers Ms. Kaniz Fatema is very responsible and dedicated
for her work. Normally she starts her day with traditional management. That means after
coming to the office she starts to look at the accounts section of the company where she gets
to know the latest situation of orders and product selling information. This actually helps her
to get an overview of performance at the beginning of the day.

Every day she needs take lots of phone calls from her customers. In the call most of
the customers want to know about new products and also about the progress of their orders.
Sometimes she needs to give instructions to her sales executive if there is any new policy
and also need to share some information with them regarding the new product so that the
sales executive can describe the features of new products to the customers very efficiently.
This kind of work is basically part of communication.

Though there is no particular department for HR in Apan Jewelers but still as a part
of organization the director needs to see few things regarding HR. In each outlet of Apan
Jewelers there are almost 25-30 employees who perform various tasks. But the majorities
are the sales executives. There are some counters in each outlet and every counter has
different products. One sales executive is being appointed for each counter and these sales
persons are being interchanged with the counter after every one-month so that they can be
familiar with all kinds of products. Moreover there are also some female sales executives
who work side by side with their male counter parts to help female customers. Theses
female employees also been transferred from counter to counter after 1 month. She takes
these all decisions.

Jewelry is an industry where connection, trust and brand image is very important for
selling purpose. To maintain such standard the director needs to keep contact with some
influential and VIP customers. The sales executives treat normally ordinary customers but
the special customers deal with the director directly in her office. They have been highly
cared and given good privileges because the director knows very well that these privileged
customers will ultimately bring lot of new customers. On the other hand the director also
call some VIP customers personally at the time of various festivals just to make sure that
those customers keep Apan Jewelers in their mind. This is how the director Ms. Kaniz
Fatema maintains her networking.


20%
40%
10%
30%
Break down of typical days work
Traditional
Management
Communication
Human Resources
Networking
From the above information we came to know that the director of Apan Jewelers
concentrate more on communication and in networking. She daily spends almost 40 % of
her time in communication because this is a business where a manager or director constantly
needs to communicate with their clients. Sometimes she receives calls from customers and
sometimes she gives call to her customers on the priority basis. On the other hand she
spends almost 30 % of her time in networking because networking is a key part of this
business. Most of the prominent customers who have huge dealings with Apan jewelers are
very influential and political figures. Huge part of the profit comes from these types of
customers. She also needs to keep contact with some media personalities for the promotion
of their products.


SWOT Analysis


Educa onal Qualifica on
Knowledge about customers
Mo va ng power
Communica on skill
Effec ve leadership
Appearance and charisma
Rising sector of Bangladesh
FUTURE PROMOTION
APPRECIATION
More experienced
candidate
Poli cal Situa on
ECONOMIC UNSTABILITY
Lack of me management
AGE
LACK OF EXPERIENCE
OVER CONFIDENCE

Strength
Weakness
Opportunity
Threat
SWOT analysis
Strength:

Kaniz Fatema is a successful Director and therefore her strengths are not only related to her
jobs. It is how she deals with a certain situation and it reflects her strength. Strength arises
from personal experience in life e.g. family background, hobbies and interests and strategies
learned while taking part in games and sports, events, and functions. Making a list of a
persons strengths is a time consuming process its simply because as long as the person
doesnt use these inherit skills in difficult situations it may not be considered as a strength.
There also other factors that contributes to a persons strength.

Educational Qualification:
Excellence in education has given Kaniz Fatema a competitive edge. She has been a bright
student from his early life and he successfully demonstrated that in the S.S.C and H.S.C
examination. Kaniz Fatema passed her S.S.C in 2004 and H.S.C in 2006 She got her
educational qualification from reputed institutions from very beginning. . Her education
helps her take decisions confidently. She has expertise in both finance and marketing that
enables her to take best decisions for the interest of her organization.

Knowledge about customers:
Since she has been working in in Apan jewelers for 1.5 year and it is her family business,
she knows ins and outs of the company. She knows about what ups and downs this industry
has faced in past years and with that experience she can assume about the future situation.
She also knows about consumer preference. And in which occasion which design will be
more preferable to them. In addition to that, her experienced idea about the industry and
consumer is really important to take major decisions.

Motivating Power:
She has an exceptional motivational power that adds up to her strengths. He is always
smiling while talking to any customer that makes any difficult situation easy. She knows
how to inspire his subordinates as well the customers. To keep them motivated she
sometimes allows early leaves in case of emergency. She knows how to give the proper
value to the customers and knows how to motivate them to enhance the brand equity. Beside
this she is also an employee oriented person.

Communication Skill:
The way she communicates with her seniors, colleagues and subordinates is strength of her.
She maintains a measured level of frankness with them and keeps the environment friendly
in a formal way. Her friendly way of speaking has a great effect on the people around him.
She communicates with the loyal customers regularly to know their liking and preferences.
Customers feel free to communicate with him whenever they want. As she treat them in a
friendly manner. During the interview we got see a glimpse of his tremendous
communication skills.

Appearance and charisma:
Kaniz Fatema has a gift of influencing people very easily and she relates to his customers in
an intimate way while having a conversation. The way she dresses herself up and the way
she talks and convinces people is a big strength in her. Because of her appearance and
charismatic personality, people respect her and like her a lot. This is a reason behind his
popularity among the employees and customers.


Weakness:
Weakness is the characteristics that place an individual at a disadvantage relative to others.
The absence of certain strengths may be viewed as a weakness. These may appear to be
easier to identify but it takes far more objectivity. As in the case of strengths, it is essential
to be aware of all your weaknesses while dealing with an issue and also to know which
weaknesses are relevant to a particular circumstance.



Lack of time management:
Kaniz Fatema does believe in doing things at the right time. She does the work effectively.
She has a lack of time management. But time is a very important factor for doing a job
successfully. Because of her lack of time management she faces different problems. And it
may have a negative impact on the business. Apan jewelers may lose its brand equity.

Age:
Kaniz Fatema has achieved her position of director at a very young age. This gives her
many facilities but at the same time this can be a problem for her. Some of her subordinates
who are older than her might feel not to listen to her orders. This might create unfavorable
situations. Moreover, a high position needs a weight of age also and in case of her this
weight of age is probably a little less.

Lack of experience:
Kaniz Fatema has joined Apan Jewelers in 2012. She has only one and half year experience
in this industry. Before joining here she worked for transcom only for 3months. She has less
knowledge about the working environment. Because of her insufficient experience she
sometimes gets confused and fails to handle any unwanted situation. Though she knows
about consumer preference and likings her lack of experience sometimes she does not
understand what difficulties and conditions subordinates and customers are going through.
Sometimes she takes wrong decision.

Over confidence:
She also gets over confidence about the profitability of Apan Jewelers without doing much
research. Being confident about doing the right job is a positive factor but sometimes her
over confidence about consumer perception creates problems and she makes silly mistakes.



Opportunity:
Opportunities are those positive external conditions that one does not control but of which
one can plan to take advantage. This part of the analysis allows one to identify areas that
may present possibilities and prospects for advancement and growth.


Rising sector of Bangladesh:

As gold is a rising sector not only in Bangladesh but also in the whole world being a director
in Apan Jewelers settles her future perfectly. Its a grand opportunity for her to prove herself
and make Apan jewelers more renowned.


Future promotion:
When it comes to opportunities, the first opportunity that should be mentioned is the
opportunity of his future promotions. As it is a family business and Kaniz Fatema has
started managing a role of a director from her early age she may get promoted to managing
partner in future. She is aware of her potential and she is using all the opportunities to reach
his ultimate goal that is becoming the managing partner of Apan jewelers.

Innovative Ideas:
She is the only girl at this age in the jewelry sector. She gets the appreciation from all the
employees and her immediate employer as a working-woman. She gets many innovative
ideas rather than the traditional one. This is an opportunity for her to sustain.

Threats:

Threats are the negative external factor that one does not control but the person can try to
take steps to reduce the impact. By finding out the threats that exist in ones life pertaining
to ones personal growth, relationships, career or whatever area he is concentrating on, he
can head them off and even turn some of them into opportunities. Identifying ones threats
helps the person recognizes areas where he or she needs to focus a little more and anticipate
barriers and challenges.

More experienced candidate:
Though Kaniz Fatema has impressive degrees, she has lack of experience. Though she is
planning for foreign degrees, she does not have it yet. So she has competition with new
comers with various experiences. So this is a clear threat for her. This might even deprive
her from future promotions.


Political Situation:
In our country the influence of political parties is really high. As a result, management often
gets pressurized to appoint recommended people instead of the ones who really deserve the
positions. Since higher and more respectable positions tend to face this situation more often,
her future is more likely to be influenced with the change of political environment.

Economic fluctuation:
The economics condition of our country fluctuates all the time. So as a director Kaniz
Fatema has to take flexible decisions all the time. This economic condition has an indirect
impact on her job. This is also a threat for her to sustain properly.








Managers Personality Characteristics


There are some established models that are used to analyze and evaluate the personality
characteristics. These models give clear idea about the personality of the manager. A
managers personality has a tremendous impact on his/her work performance. To have a
basic idea about the personality of our selected managers and to know whether her
personality goes with her work type or not we have applied those models and these are- The
five model, Locus of control, personality type, self-esteem, self-monitoring, personality-job
fit theory.

The Five Models:

1. Extraversion: It means the degree to which someone likes to meet new people and
make friendship with them. Our manager is a very extrovert person. She likes to
interact with her employees and customers. She regularly provides guideline to the
employees and she also has the ability to convince her customers.

2. Agreeableness: It measures to what degree a persons opinion is different than
others. Highly agreeable people will not argue with anyone. They will always agree
with you. Our managers agreeableness is in a moderate level. At first she likes to
know the suggestions of employees and then she thinks about it. If she thinks that
their suggestion is logical only then she agrees with them otherwise not.

3. Conscientiousness: Highly conscientious people do not take too many goals at a
time. They like to do one by one. When they do something they fully focus on that.
She has high level of conscientiousness. She doesnt prefer many goals at a time.
She likes to do one by one. According to her, if she focuses on few things, it let her
do those jobs perfectly. From her past experience, she got to know that focusing on
too many things at a time can bring harmful results.

4. Emotional Stability: it means, to what degree someone can handle his/ her emotion,
nervousness. Emotional stability is very much needed for some jobs. Our manager is
very much emotionally stable. Sometime she has to hear a lot of harsh words from
her customers but she never faced emotional breakdown. She takes it as a challenge,
so she keeps her calm and deals positively. She does the same thing with her
employees.

5. Openness to Experience: To what degree someone is open to experience new
things. Those people are very eager to do new thing. They are very imaginative. Our
manager scores high in open to experience new thing. She tries new, innovative
things to cope up with the demand of the time. While interviewing her, we got to
know that technical innovation is going very fast and that is why they can no longer
be dependent on the traditional way of doing business. So, she is also changing with
the time for the sake of the business and trying and implementing new way of doing
business.

Locus of control: There are two types of Locus of Control-

1. Internal Locus of Control: it refers to those people who believe that they have the
master control over everything. They do not blame their luck or any other factor for
their failure. They believe its because of them. They have high personality. They
have strong state of mind.

2. External Locus of Control: People who believe that they are pawns of their fate.
Their personality is not that strong. If they faced with any failure, they blame it to
other things rather their own effort.
Our manager has internal locus of control. When she fails to do something, at first she
identifies who is responsible for the task. If she thinks that she is responsible then she
doesnt hesitate to take the blame. According to her, she is human too and if employees can
go wrong so can she. So, instead of blaming the other factors, she tries to find out where she
has done the mistake and try to correct it as soon as possible.

Personality Type: There are two types of personality-

1. Type A Personality: People who want to achieve more and more in less time. They
are always in hurry. They are always in a mission to do something. They are quantity
focused not quality.

2. Type B Personality: People who are not in any time urgency to do anything. They
believe time is there. But when they need to do anything they do it seriously.

She has B type personality. She is always relaxed. In her job she has to face a lot of
problems. But she never gets too much excited or worried. She remains calm but does her
work properly when needed. She always tries to devote her effort when it is necessary. She
think that being worried and tensed for a task decrease the level of perfection and the
ultimate result does not come out up to the mark. So, she keeps her relaxed and try to do her
best in due time.

Self-Esteem: Self-esteem is what people think of them. People, who have high self-esteem,
have high self-confidence. Our manager has a high level of self-esteem. So her confidence
and expectation for success is high.

Self-Monitoring: It means to what degree someone can adjust his behavior based on the
situation. She also scores high in self-monitoring, because she can rapidly adjust her
behavior to external situational factors. So, she can behave differently in different situation.




Leadership Styles

Kurt Lewin conducted IOWA leadership studies in 1930s. The democratic style states that
the employers are very friendly with their employees and allow participation. The leader
involves the employees in the decision-making process but retains the final say. Many
employees like the trust they receive and respond with cooperation, team spirit, and high
morale. The democratic leadership style is most effective when the leader wants to keep
employees informed about matters that affect them and wants to provide opportunities for
employees to develop a high sense of personal growth and job satisfaction.

The Ohio state leadership studies were carried out in 1945. The goal was to analyze
leadership in numerous types of groups and situations. The consideration style says that
leaders are very caring and concerned about the human needs of their employees. They build
teamwork, help employees with their problems and provide psychological support. This is a
people-oriented leadership style. It is the degree to which job relationships are associated
with mutual trust, faith, respect, friendship, support from subordinates and informal
communication.

Max Webber introduced the transformational leadership style. Under this leadership style,
the subordinates view leaders as a charismatic person who can inspire and motivate their
employees to do things. They take the time to listen to each and every employee that works
for them to develop a spirit of cooperation. Employees will also get considerable amount of
recognition as this leader is going to know what their accomplishments are.
Transformational leadership is a vital role for effective managers because leader
effectiveness determines the success level of the organization.

While interviewing the director of Apan Jewelers, I observed that she follows all the
employee oriented leadership styles while taking sales in consideration. The democratic
leadership style allows her to bring employees together to solve common problems of the
organization, open up communication channels and build a strategy around the overall
agreement. The consideration style also helps her to understand her employees mentality
and their needs. For example, if an employee is facing personal problems she permits them
to take leave from work and come back when the problem is solved. Employees must show
good performance. She shifts the employees from one counter to another in order to make
them multi skilled. If an employee faces difficulty, say in the diamond section, the person
would be shifted to the section where he or she feels comfortable. This is how she earns
their trust, respect and friendship. She believes that the solution of a conflict depends on the
conflict itself. Therefore if she thinks that the problem is too controversial then she permits
them to solve it secretly so that the employee is not embarrassed. However if the employees
feel that the problem needs to be solved in front of everyone, they are welcomed to do that.
Transformational leadership style gives her some kind of charisma, which encourages
employees to listen to her. She is able to motivate them to perform well. She empowers her
employees to some extent that works in the best interest of the organization. Her employees
see her as a leader acting as a strong role model with high values.


Motivation

Motivation is the best way to make the employees productive. Only money cannot keep an
employee for a long period of time. To be successful a manager must know how to motivate
their employees and for that she/he must know what interests the employees. If a manager
knows the basic tactics of motivating his/her employees, then it will be easier for her to keep
her employees moral high in the workplace.

In Apan Jewelers they follow some basic techniques to enhance employees motivation.
They have found from their past experience that recognition of the employees effort is the
best way to increase motivation. Apan Jewelers provides briefing to employees in every one
month, which guides and recognizes their effort. It increases the employees moral and
increase enthusiasm in their work field. According to Kaniz Fatema recognition is the best
way to motivate her employees. When an employee is recognized by his work and effort,
she will put more effort in future without any doubt.

In addition, Apan Jewelers giveaway full one-month bonus to those employees who have
100% attendance. Such effort leads Apan Jewelers employees to increase their attendance
at work and thus increase the employee productivity. This one-month bonus is given after
the year-end to the employee of the year. While interviewing her, we got to know that the
last employee of the year title was given to their cleaner. By this she wanted to tell us that
they recognize effort of employees from cleaner to sales executive.

Apan Jewelers believes that applying Theory Y is the best way to increase motivation of
their employees. As Theory Y states that they should enjoy their work, deliberately taking
responsibility of the organization and leadership style is participative
(http://www.managementstudyguide.com/theory-x-y-motivation.htm). These give
empowerment to their employees. Apan Jewelers believes in moderate level of
empowerment and they can only use it at the time of bargaining to a certain level.

In Hertzberg Factor 2 he said that, There are some factors if it presents in an organization it
will build high level of motivation and job satisfaction. But if these conditions are absent,
that do not mean a high level dissatisfaction. They are called as motivational factors or
satisfiers.(Robbins & Judge, 2001). In Apan Jewelers every year they held picnic and
football match among employees. All the jersey, sneakers and other accessories for the
football match are provided by the Apan Jewelers.

In Apan Jewelers there are some female employees who are students. At the time of their
exam, Apan Jewelers management allows them to take leave for their examination and does
not give absent if it is for attending their exam. Apan Jewelers clearly understand that the
values of exam to those part time employees are very important.

Furthermore, there is a tradition in Apan Jewelers to giveaway a new set of uniforms to their
female employees after every six months. The new uniform is always well designed and
crafted luxuriously so, that employees not only loves it but wear it with pride. Apan Jeweler
believes if employees look beautiful self-esteem among themselves. They also get the
feeling that they are valued by the organization.

Communication Styles

Downward Communication- According to Judge (2012-2013), Communication that
flows one level of a group or organization to a lower level is downward communication
(p.387).

While interviewing Kaniz Fatema we got to that they apply the downward way of
communication regularly to facilitate their daily work. She uses this way communication to
let her employees know about any current issue regarding the business. The sales executives
are made aware of the ways of dealing with customers, any change in business procedures,
or newly added rules and regulations through this communication style. As Apan Jewelers
has its own owner for every showroom, so owners and sales executives work in the same
office. So the downward communication takes place mostly face-to-face through briefing.

Upward Communication- the communication that moves from lowers level to upper level
is known as upward communication (Judge, 2012-2013, p.388).

Apan Jewelers also have the tendency to use upward way of communication as it let the
management know about any problem faced by the sales executives. Through this style sales
executive can let her know about any conflicts going among them. This helps them to solve
the conflict as conflicts make employees unproductive. So, upward communication helps in
this regard. Employees in lower levels can also let them know about any problem faced by
them while dealing the customers. So, management can take necessary steps to facilitate the
dealing process. Apan jewelers have the system that allows the employees to directly go to
the management and tell any problem regarding the work.

These two ways of communication actually help the organization to be more productive as
there are fewer barriers between the higher and lower level of employees.



Manager recommendation toward future leader

Kaniz Fatema, our select manager for the project recommended and gave some suggestion,
which are very important to be a future manager of an organization. They are listed below-

She told us to strive for our realistic dreams and focus only on that. She also
mentioned that people will talk a lot to demotivate you but if we think that our goal
is right then we should listen to ourselves.
She suggested us Be first in Life, rather than in studies. She meant that ensuring a
good CGPA should not be our focus. Our focus should be to learn and gain
knowledge so that we can apply it to our real work life and become successful

The manager also recommended us to explore the world as much as we can.
Through exploring you will gain valuable knowledge that will last forever.
Understand the difference between cultures, get to know their livelihood and analyze
how it will help you in your business or in your own career said by Kaniz Fatema.

She recommended us be knowledgeable regarding technology. She suggested to stay
updated with the latest technology.

Finally, she told us to be presentable all the time so that others do not know how
much we are stressed out. She also told us to be relaxed at work. And be quality
focused rather than quantity. (Interview Intext Citation)