Baby Steps & Business Leaps Ft. Amal Hayat

I sit down with Amal Hayat, the founder of juty shoti, one of the first footwear brands to show up on Instagram back when e-commerce was still a new idea in Pakistan. She started with a single picture of a hand-painted kusa and built something she never saw coming. This conversation is about the tiny moments that shaped her business, the hard pivot into making shoes in-house, and what it really looks like to become a mother while holding on to a dream. No fluff, no shortcuts, just the honest arc of building something when life keeps handing you new seasons.

A picture, a DM, and a business she never planned

Amal never set out to sell kusas. She was in Karachi for a management training program with an FMCG company, living alone in an empty apartment after work. On a weekend, she saw a hand-painted kusa in a local market and thought it was cool. She put a picture on her private Instagram for friends and family in Lahore. That picture blew up.

“I started getting so many DMs and follow requests, I was like, okay, I need to shift this,” she tells me. One friend suggested she take orders. She made a small list. Friends of friends began messaging. Just like that, juty shoti was born. She didn’t have a business plan, a logo, or even basic Photoshop skills. “Some things just happen when you’re not thinking about them happening at all,” she says. That coincidental start, when an industry doesn’t exist yet, is its own kind of magic.

From curating to crafting every pair by hand

For a long time, juty shoti was a curation business. Amal would source the shoes and sell them. But relying on someone else’s quality and design frustrated her. Sizes were inconsistent, materials varied, and she had no control over how the product evolved. So she decided to do something she had zero training for: make the shoes herself.

“It was a degree after a degree,” she says, laughing about learning the science of footwear from scratch. Leather, stitching, soles, sizing conversion from Euro to Pakistani, what material goes where. Her mother became her biggest ally, hunting down people who could guide them. Amal had to walk into markets where she was often the only woman, working with craftsmen who weren’t used to taking direction from a female business owner. She’d be asked even years later, “You do production? You?” She pushed through that resistance, knowing she needed to re-engineer the kusa from a festive-only shoe into an everyday staple.

An industry grows up around her

Over eight years, Amal watched e-commerce in Pakistan transform. When she started, a single person did everything: photography, replies, packing, deliveries. Now there are giants, specialized teams, and a whole supply chain that has deepened because of demand. Raw materials became more available. Color options exploded. Even logistics partners introduced try-and-buy services to build trust with customers unsure about sizing.

But growth brought its own shadows. Some newer brands treat the kusa like fast fashion, using cheap materials and cutting corners. Amal sees that as a disservice to the craft and to customers. “The educated customer knows they’re being fooled,” she says. She’s had her designs copied so many times that she and her husband, who later joined the business, now text each other “oh, another one” and move on. Still, she believes that staying true to quality and comfort is the only long game worth playing. The little wins, like women telling her they can wear juty shoti kusas through monsoon puddles or all through pregnancy, keep her grounded.

A sinking ship and the choice to be present

Then came motherhood. Amal describes it plainly: the business was a sinking ship by the time her son arrived. She wanted to be fully present, physically and mentally. “I really wanted to enjoy every single moment. He’s never going to be 9 months again,” she tells me. So she consciously put work on the back burner. Not because she had to, but because she chose to.

That choice is a privilege she acknowledges, but it’s also one many women wrestle with. The mom guilt that creeps in when you work, the work guilt when you’re with your child. She felt it all. It took her two years to feel ready to return full-time, and the turning point came when her husband left his corporate job and stepped into the business. He brought structure, processes, and a partner who could handle finance and operations while she focused on design. The risk was huge: no more safety net, every egg in one basket, and livelihoods of craftsmen and their families depending on them. But that very responsibility pulled her out of the haze. The business wasn’t just hers anymore. It couldn’t sink.

Slow mornings, lists, and learning to trust herself

Today, Amal’s days start at 5 or 6 a.m. Those three quiet hours before her son wakes up are sacred. Sometimes she works on designs, sometimes she just sits with her coffee and writes a list. “I value my hours so much now,” she says. She’s become a person who writes everything down, not to rigidly control the day but to have mental clarity so she can actually be present in each moment.

We talk about the vicious cycle of guilt, where you think about work when you’re with your child and about your child when you’re working. Amal’s shift came when she started making decisions from love, not fear. “I actively tell myself, you need that time for yourself to be a better mom for him later in the day.” She learned to trust that if she craves creative time, she’ll find it. If she craves baby time, she’ll savor it without a voice in her head telling her she should be somewhere else. That trust didn’t come overnight. It was messy, full of trial and error, and deeply personal.

The long game isn’t a race

“It’s like seasons where you’re thriving and then seasons where you’re barely surviving,” Amal says, and I feel that in my bones. Her business has been through exhibitions in Lahore, Karachi, Islamabad, Faisalabad, and even Dubai, where customers drove from other emirates just to buy a pair of juty shoti shoes. Those are the moments that matter. But so are the slow seasons, when all you can do is keep the lights on. Amal reminds me that in cricket, there are times when you need to play tuk tuk, just holding your ground. The same goes for business and for life. If life is forcing you to slow down, maybe that’s exactly where you need to be.

As we wrap up, Amal says something that sticks. “Embrace the change. Unlearn and relearn. Give yourself that space to be where you are.” That’s the heart of this conversation. Not a blueprint, but a real story of a woman who built a brand, became a mother, almost lost it all, and found her way back on her own terms. That’s the kind of quiet strength that deserves to be celebrated.