Billing for your beauty parlour and cosmetics shop in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands
The haircut, the cream she took home and the bridal advance, on one customer's page.
A facial, a cream and a salt-wind frizz on the same bill
Two coconut oils on one shelf
The shelf holds the pressed oil that a woman brings from her home and the bottled oil that came across the sea. Customers call both coconut oil. One costs you more and one sells faster, and the count of each lives in your head and on the corner of a slip that is lost by Friday. A customer who asks which is the island oil is answered from memory, and a helper who is new gives the other answer.
Bottles of oil bought as gifts for relatives on other islands
Customers buy several bottles of oil to carry to relatives on other islands. They ask for them wrapped, and the rate for three bottles is not the rate for one. At the counter you add the sum, wrap the bottles, and answer the next customer's question in the same minute, and a wrong total goes across the water with the bottles.
Hair that has been in salt wind and sun
Half the women who come in have hair that has spent the day in salt wind and sun. They ask for oil and a trim, and they pick up small things on the way out: a sachet of conditioner, a clip, a small bottle. Ten small sales are made before noon, and none of them is written down. At the end of the day the drawer holds more coins than the slip says, and the small bottles on the shelf are fewer than you expected.
Where the coconut oil on the shelf begins
A bottle of coconut oil on a parlour shelf starts on a palm.
- Trade in copra, dried coconut kernel, has long been the mainstay of the Nicobar islands, which depended almost entirely on copra exports for outside goods (2010 report). The coconut is the crop the islands know best.
Tools for a parlour that sells time and goods together
Bills on your phone
A trim, a bottle of pressed oil and a sachet of conditioner as three lines on one bill, so the evening shows which line was the work and which the goods.
Daily reports
Bottles of each oil sold on each day of the sunny weeks, so the next order is made from what the sun and the salt really sold.
Low stock warnings
A warning on the pressed oil when a woman's batch is nearly sold, so you can ask her for the next lot while she still has oil to bring.
The service, the bottle and the wedding booked weeks ahead
The evening count says which oil to order
At the end of the day each oil has its own count of bottles left, so the next order is for the one that is running out and not for both. The pressed oil and the shipped oil no longer share a figure on the corner of a slip.
The bottles for the relatives billed together
Each size of oil is its own item with its own rate. Three bottles for a relative are one line with the quantity three, and a second relative's bottles are a second bill under the same name. The gift crosses the water to another island, and the count at the shop falls by exactly what was sent.
The small sales added up by the evening
Each clip, sachet and small bottle is an item with a rate. When a customer takes five of them with her trim the bill adds them up and each count goes down. In the evening the list shows which small things went with a trim, and which clip you will want more of.
Questions island parlour and cosmetics owners ask
A woman who presses coconut oil at home wants to leave a few bottles with me. How do I keep hers from the bottles that came by ship?
Give her a page. Note the bottles she leaves with the day, and each bottle sold is a line under her name, so you know how many of hers are left and what she is due.
Customers ask whether the oil was pressed on the islands. Can the bill say so?
Name the item for where it came from, such as pressed on the island or from the mainland. The name prints on the bill, so the answer is on paper and not only in your mouth.
The pressed island oil and the shipped oil sit side by side. Which sold more in the sunny weeks?
Make the pressed oil and the shipped oil two items. Open the sunny days' sales and each shows on its own line, so you see which was asked for and which to order more of.
Customers come in groups of three or four on one booking. Can each woman have her own bill under one booking?
Make a bill under each woman's name and keep the booking on the page of the woman who made it. Each pays for her own sitting, and nobody splits a bill at the door.
Women who learned to make virgin coconut oil
On 18-19 June 2026 ICAR-KVK South Andaman trained 37 women and self-help group members to make virgin coconut oil, including packaging, labelling and quality control. A shop that stocks such oil will have makers coming to its counter with their first bottles.
A three-month Car Nicobar programme funded by NABARD began with 30 self-help group women making Geographical Indication virgin coconut oil, and the 'Nico Hut' brand was launched. For a cosmetics counter that is a local oil with a name of its own on the shelf.