Billing for your clothes shop in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands
Every size and colour counted, so the carton you order from the mainland is the one you really need.
.jpg){kind=link}
Tools for a shop that restocks across the sea
Bills on your phone
A customer with a festival list gets two sarees, a petticoat and three metres of lining added up in front of her, the cloth in metres and the rest by the piece.
GST bills
Uniform cloth for a school ordered in bulk, billed with GST worked out on each line, for the school office to file.
Credit book (khata)
The family from a smaller island that takes the whole festival wardrobe on account in October and clears it when the coconut money comes in, each bill dated on its page.
Why the missing size is never the one you ordered
A wedding party wants ten sarees in one shade and the hanger holds two
The size that sold out first is the one the next customer asks for, and the shade a bride saw at last year's wedding is not the shade in the carton you ordered. A party of relatives wants the same colour in many pieces, and the hanger has two. You wrote the order before anyone had asked, and there was nothing to count it against.
Festival wear is ordered before anyone asks for it
You decide in advance how many sarees, kurtas and children's dresses to bring for the season, in which colours. If the order is wrong you cannot send half of it back, so you hold the unsold ones until next year or sell them for less than they cost.
The bolt-end goes back on the shelf with no length written
A customer from a smaller island has three metres of cotton cut, and the leftover end of the bolt goes back on the shelf. Nobody writes how long it is. The next customer who needs a school-uniform length finds you unrolling it to measure, and over a season the ends pile up, each a different length, none of them counted.
.jpg){kind=link}
Counting the hangers before the ship sails
The mediums and the one shade that ran bare last festival
Last year's festival left a gap in the mediums and in one shade. Open the count of each size and colour and the same gap is visible again before the festival is near. Write the order with those names in it, and the hangers are full when the ship comes in.
The shade's count read out to the wedding party
When a wedding party asks for one shade, the item's count says how many pieces of it are on the island today. If it falls short, you tell the party before it chooses, and order the rest from the mainland with the party's need written in the order.
The blouse stitched this month is collected on the next crossing
A woman from a smaller island buys her cloth on this trip and leaves it for stitching. She pays for the cloth today. The stitching bill goes under the same name when she next crosses, and her page shows both, so on the day she collects the blouse neither of you has to remember what was paid on the first visit.
A carton of shirts and the sea it crosses
Every shirt on a hanger here has been on a ship.
- Port Blair's Haddo, Wharf and Chatham harbours take the ships from the mainland, about 1,190 km from Chennai and 1,255 km from Kolkata. A carton of shirts covers that sea distance before it reaches a hanger.
Questions Andaman clothes sellers ask
A customer wants three metres, the bolt has two left, and the next bolt comes only with the ship. What do I tell her?
Read the bolt's count before you cut: it shows two metres. She can take the two now or put her name down for the next bolt, and the next bolt goes on your order so the ship brings it.
The school's white and grey cloth are ordered together before the June ship. Can one order keep the two lengths apart?
Yes. Keep the white and the grey as two items counted in metres. Send the order with a line for each, and when the ship comes, note what arrived against each line. A short grey shows at once.
Shirts have sat on the hangers since the last ship. How do I tell which ones to price down before the next ship lands?
Look at the count of each shirt item. The ones still at their full count are the ones that sat. Lower the rate on those before the next ship lands, so the new shirts do not hang beside old ones at the same price.
The carton from the mainland holds forty shirts in four sizes and ten colours. How do I add it to the count without a long evening?
Add each size and colour once with its quantity as you unpack, and the count starts from what is really on the floor, not from what the order said.
Hand embroidery and the hawkers' market in Port Blair
Port Blair garments and accessories with traditional embroidery and weaving are sold at Sagarika Emporium, Aberdeen Bazaar and local markets where independent artisans display their wares. A shop next to that kind of work prices its own cloth and ready-mades against it, and a customer sees both on the same walk.
Shopkeepers at Aberdeen Bazaar have long sold old stock such as clothes and shoes cheaply on Independence Day and Republic Day, so a hawkers' market was set up at ITF Ground in 2011. A cloth shop here knows the two days its old stock goes, and the count of each item tells it what is left to clear before each.