"While They're All Zigging, We Zag." The Tut-ally Inspiring Story Behind Juba Ragab

*with the contributions of mariam.

In case you haven't heard of the name before, keep reading because this is one person you definitely wanna know about. Who is he? Juba Ragab. 

Mohammed - also known as Juba - Ragab is an architecture student, graphic designer, and the founder of Tut’s Socks and Pixels Adv. Agency. Juba has been doing graphic designs for more than 10 years now, he started out at the age of 11 by creating collages and merging photos together, then gradually improved his passion until he became qualified enough to work for branding companies at just the age of 14!

Juba's love for art and design led him to create a whole branch of art, transgressing from his favourite art technique; one line art. One line art is a drawing technique where a drawing is drawn with just one line from start to finish. What Juba does, though, is one line scribbled art, where the drawing is from A to Z one line, but he adds scribbling to the piece as well, making it his own technique. He took this talent to a whole other level by drawing portraits of celebrities, thus greatly gaining recognition. 

Digital designing was the reason for Tut Socks' birth. In early 2019, Ragab took a digital marketing workshop in which the instructor asked them to come up with a startup idea and elaborate on how they would market for it, of course, Ragab had tons of ideas floating by, and since he was into colourful socks during that period of his life, he decided to work on a 100% Egyptian socks online store with his designs on them. The idea grasped his instructor's attention, which made the idea grow in Juba's mind, soon bringing it life. 

The start was immediately successful, Juba posted one single design - the infamous Atef from El-Nazer socks - and, even though the socks were not even designed in real life yet, their page had already gotten 4k likes and tons of pre-orders that when the collection actually dropped, it sold out in just two weeks, even when they had planned for it to stay for at least three months! This was a huge kickstart to his startup, and before you knew it, they had dropped two more socks production lines, followed by three more, and (exclusive info!) they have six more collections coming soon! 

All of this did not happen easily, though, and for Tut Socks to emerge with perfect designs and quality, Juba and his partner Hazem - who manages the packaging and delivery while Juba works from Malaysia - had to go through numerous factories to reach the results they wanted; their first condition was to use 100% Egyptian cotton in order to preserve their Egyptian identity and their second one was that they insisted on using embroidery rather than printing on their socks, all to maintain satisfying results and delivering flawless socks to their tut-ally happy customers! 

"While they're all zigging, we zag!"

Juba's words when explaining what makes them different from other brands; they all follow the same rules, ordering from brands abroad and importing materials from other countries, while Ragab's goal was to focus on marketing for his tutt-ally Egyptian brand. What also makes them unique in the market is how grounded they are, as Juba mentioned how they always try to go out and talk to their customers, understand their demands and what they're expecting, they always try to meet their expectations and build an unbreakable customer relationship, as well as forming friendships with their clients. 

So, what advice would a successful entrepreneur give to someone launching their own startup? 

"Don't fall in love with your idea in order to constantly develop it," he said, "and validate it in the market before making any risky decisions." 

As for what Ragab plans to do after graduation, it is unknown as his answer to this question was that every achievement he's done was always God's plan, not his, and that he's just going with the flow to see what else God has in store for him.