The lure of education brought Shah to Ohio where he studied marketing and sales at the University of Toledo in 1982. A stint at a Manhattan clothing store shifted into selling New York-style Jewish bagels in the heart of Brooklyn, where he lived. He briefly ran an import-export clothing business, selling brands by mainstream popular artists like Beyonce, Jay-Z, Lil Wayne and Wiz Khalifa, names that roll off with apparent ease despite Azad's Bangladeshi accent. He supplied a clothing brand of his own creation, Cut2Fit, to a store in The Mall in Columbia.