The series Nepal Made profiles world-class Nepali products and the people behind them.
Deepak Acharya was born and raised in Simara, before his uncle took him to Pokhara when he was only in sixth grade. After class, he helped sell jackets and outdoor gear at his uncle's Lakeside store.
Twenty-two years later, Acharya is still selling jackets. Not international brands like he used to, but products of his own outdoor gear company, DOLPO.
Acharya and his brother-in-law, Krishna Ammai, started making and selling jackets and gear for international companies out of Thamel. After losing his business partner in the 2015 earthquake, he was done selling imported items. He launched his own line of outerwear, named after Nepal’s rugged and remote district, known for its stunning arid landscape.
The careful selection of the name DOLPO paid off. It took off, providing a high-quality, affordable Nepal-made alternative to foreign companies.
“A lot of work went into choosing the name Dolpo,” says Acharya, who considered what came into people’s minds when they heard the name of a place with double-O sound. “I wanted a brand that local customers would instantly relate to toughness and mountains.”
The elegant logo reflects this as well, made up of two overlapping rounded triangles denoting mountains with a third peak in the middle. Underneath is ‘DOLPO’ in upper case sans serif.
RIGHT QUALITY, RIGHT PRICE
“Our philosophy is Right quality, Right price,” says co-founder Deepak Acharya, adding with a smile that the pricing strategy of a particular competitor has made business easy: “The employees at North Face may sell North Face, but they wear Dolpo.”
The rebranding was so successful that Acharya regrets not launching it sooner. The reason for the success is that the outdoor gear market in Nepal has taken off with more and more domestic tourists trekking in the high mountains to share their adventures on social media.