VEGAS INC Magazine - Latest Las Vegas business news, features and commentaries about gaming, tourism, real estate and more
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ck ’Em Get smart Power tweets Overheard Done Deal RIGHT NOW er Lunch The Numbers .com YOUR AD HERE gh Sell low VEGASINCmag Executive class Read this! The Pitch is back NOW SERVING LAS VEGAS 95 gas then VEGASinc2021 Gate keeper American dream ? ? ? ! nnovator FortuneCookie $ Grilled The Survivor MALALAY KOHISTANI’S INCREDIBLE JOURNEY Inside Taj Boutique, an Indian clothing store in Las Vegas, owner Malalay Kohistani radiates almost as brightly as the colorful clothes she designs and makes. Each stitch tells her story of hardship as a young, Muslim girl in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, and of her successful business in Las Vegas. With a little help from her mom and with money she’d saved up as a teenager, Kohistani opened an Indian Spice store in Las Vegas in 1988 during her senior year at Valley High School. But this teenager’s story was just getting started. When the Soviet War broke out in Afghanistan in 1982, Kohistani was sent away alone to live with her sister in Germany. “We had no option,” she says. Her mother, who also fled the country, left for India. After a year in Germany, Kohistani was sent to Las Vegas to live with another one of her sisters to make a life for herself in America. Kohistani says she lived her life as a typical teenage girl in Las Vegas, but there was one difference—her unbridled ambition. After graduating college from University of California, Irvine, Kohistani had an idea to open a spice store. She noticed, after several visits to India to see her mom, that Las Vegas didn’t have many Indian clothing stores, and that there should be demand for one. So, she added clothing to the mix of goods available at her spice shop, and it became an instant hit. In 1996, Kohistani opened Taj Boutique in the same shopping center as her grocery store. Six years later, the grocery store was sold and she decided to focus solely on Indian clothing. Four years ago, Kohistani began creating her own designs. She says she hopes to one day sell them to major national retailers. Expansion is in her future, she says confidently. A true believer in the American dream, Kohistani laments that there’s a lack of competition for her Taj Boutique. “You become a better person when there’s business to compete with,” she says. With Kohistani’s contagious enthusiasm and decade-and-a-half of experience, she’s an American- made, Las Vegas businesswoman, through and through. —Lianna Sapien Pick ’Em Get smart Power tweets Overheard Done Deal AMERICAN DREAM ENGLISH, SECOND LANGUAGE Moonlighting Sin City Media Chatter We hear Power Lunch The Numbers .com YOUR AD HERE Buy high Sell low VEGASINCmag Executive class Read this! The Pitch is back Sin City Media Chatter We hear NOW SERVING LAS VEGAS 95 Vegas then VEGASinc2021 Gate keeper American dream ? ? ? ? ? ! The innovator FortuneCookie $ Grilled Moonlighting FORTUNE COOKIE WORDS TO LIVE BY The Survivor “IF YOU REMOVED ALL OF THE HOMOSEXUALS AND HOMOSEXUAL INFLUENCE FROM WHAT IS GENERALLY REGARDED AS AMERICAN CULTURE, YOU WOULD PRETTY MUCH BE LEFT WITH LET’S MAKE A DEAL.” MADE IN VEGAS: Malalay Kohistani, owner of Indian clothing store, Taj Boutique, is from Afghanistan. 8 —FRAN LEBOWITZ | 18 JULY 2011 | SAM MORRIS