Billing for your garment and saree shop in Andhra Pradesh
Sarees by the piece, cloth by the metre and a whole family's festival on one bill.
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Pit looms, a port and a mango market: where the cloth buyers live
The cloth in your shop comes from weaving towns, and the people who buy it come from districts that live on very different crops.
- Venkatagiri sarees, woven on pit looms, are Tirupati district's One District One Product, and about 3,064 households make them. A pit loom saree is an object made in a house.
- Kakinada port plays the lead role in exporting rice to nearly 25 African countries, and also to China and Vietnam. Families in a port district buy new cloth when the grain trade is good.
- Nunna Mango Market, on the edge of Vijayawada, gets its mangoes from farmers of NTR, Eluru and Krishna districts. The families who sell there shop for cloth after the market has paid.
What a saree counter in Andhra Pradesh counts piece by piece
Bills on your phone
A bill that names the saree by its border and colour, a red Venkatagiri with a gold edge for one line and its blouse piece for the next, so the bill says which piece left the shop.
Your own online shop
A page of this season's pit-loom and jamdani pieces, each with its picture and rate, to share with families who cannot come to the shop.
Offers for regular customers
A discount set by you for the family that bought its Ugadi sarees here, so the bride's mother returns in the wedding weeks for the blouse pieces and the cousins' cloth.
When two families fall for the same handloom saree
A handloom saree is one piece, and two families want it
A saree woven by hand is not one of many. It is the only one in that colour and border. Two families come in the same evening, both are taken with it, and the second to speak is told it has just been sold to the first. If the bill is not written at that minute, the one who left to think comes back and is told, kindly, that it is still on the shelf.
Ugadi, Sankranti and the wedding weeks fill the counter with whole families
A family does not buy one thing. It buys a saree for the mother, shirt cloth for the father by the metre, a readymade frock for the daughter and a blouse piece to go with the saree. The counter is full of folded cloth, each piece with its own rate and its own unit, and the sum comes at the end from the head of whoever is holding the pen.
The weaver's bill lists sarees the bundle does not hold
The weaver's bill lists every saree in the bundle, and the bundle holds fewer. A customer has already been told the piece is coming, and you find the gap only when you open it. By then the weaver is days away and his bill is the only word you have.
The sarees left at closing, a family's festival on one bill, the bundle in the corner
At closing the list shows which sarees are still waiting
At the end of the Ugadi evening, open the list of sarees. The ones with a count of one are still on the shelf, and the ones with nothing left went home. You can see which borders and colours went in the first hour and which are still asking for a second look.
The saree named by its border and colour on the bill
On a long Ugadi evening a family takes a few sarees at once. Put each on the bill by its border and colour, so what the family carries home reads as a list and not as a sum. Later, when she says the red with the gold edge, you find the piece.
The piece in the bundle that no order names
A handloom saree is one piece, so a piece in the bundle that is not on the order is a piece nobody has counted. Enter it as its own item the hour it is found, and it is sold from the count like any other. A saree the bill names but the bundle lacks stays unentered until it comes.
Craft stores in three cities that wanted one stock list
Questions from saree and garment shops in Andhra Pradesh
Two families want the same handloom saree in one evening. How do I keep from selling it twice?
Make the saree its own item with a count of one. The moment its bill is made the count falls to nothing, so the second family is told at once that it has gone. Then you can show that family a saree with a similar border in another colour, which is its own item with its own count.
A weaver rings from his loom village and asks which of his sarees are still with me. What do I tell him?
Open the count of his sarees and read him the list down the phone: the ones with a count are on your shelf, the ones without went home. He knows which borders to weave next before he walks to town.
Venkatagiri and Uppada sarees sell by border and colour. How do I tell which centre's pieces sold out first in last year's wedding weeks?
Put the centre in the saree's name, with its border and colour, such as a red Venkatagiri with a gold edge. Each bill then says which centre's piece went, and the day's sales list the centres apart, so the order to each weaver is for his own pieces.
Handloom centres and the One District One Product awards
Andhra Pradesh handloom centres include Mangalagiri, Venkatagiri, Uppada, Dharmavaram, Madanapalli, Chirala, Ponduru and Pulugurtha, among others. A shop that buys from several of them has several kinds of cloth arriving on different days.
Andhra Pradesh won 6 of 12 district awards in the 2023 One District One Product contest, including gold for Uppada Jamdani sarees from Kakinada district. A saree with a name like that is a piece a customer asks for by name, and one the shop wants to count carefully.