We are craftsmen, designers and creative technologists. Our team spend days (and some nights) collaborating, crafting leather, drawing lines, selling shoes and communicating with our customers.

It is simple. We are based in Okara & Lahore, where we have been making handmade shoes for 7 years. It is now a while since we got online and things have changed like WOW.

Yes, that's right. We started with the idea of helping a team of underprivileged craftsmen through technology. It is now resulted into a successful business model, but we live by a set of certain values. The mission of impacting lives of our team and their families is biggest motivation in what we do.

Back in 2010, the founders Waqas and Hussain met in their hometown, where Hussain was running his small unit of handmade leather footwear. This was an amazing group of talented craftsmen, some of them were making shoes for generations.

But everything was not going well, their business was suffering mostly because of limited resources and decrease of demand in local market.

So, Waqas discussed the idea of combining internet and centuries old craftsmanship of the sub-continent with his friend Sidra. This conversation lead to building HOMETOWN.

They started working on initial products, setting up an online store and marketing operations. The project also got financing of $10,000 by P@SHA Social Innovation Fund, an initiative by Pakistan Software Houses Association, which was sponsored by Google Inc.

Since beginning, the goals of the team were to make highly comfortable and durable footwear and to give personal attention to each customer.

It has helped HOMETOWN to start growing as a reliable brand face in a short span of time. In August 2010, Punjab Government and Google named HOMETOWN as 'Innovation Hero'  in Innovation Punjab Campaign.

Most recently, our founder Waqas Ali has been selected as Acumen Fund Pakistan Fellow.

In the video below are our co-founders, telling the story. (The video is in Urdu / Hindi but has English subtitles.)