Billing for your cloth and saree shop in Chhattisgarh
A kosa saree, a blouse piece and a stitching charge, all on one bill and one customer page.
Kosa counted by colour, small things on the bill, and an offer that goes to the right family
Each kosa colour its own item, so the last maroon piece is known
Make the maroon kosa with the gold border one item, the mustard another and the cotton ones their own. When a family asks for the maroon, the phone says whether one is left. The night count compares the shelf with the phone, colour by colour, and the notebook is not needed.
The thread and lace matched to a kosa saree, billed when the saree is
A kosa saree goes out for a wedding with a reel of thread bought to match its colour, and with lace and hooks that the bride's family forgets until the night before. The thread for the maroon kosa goes on the bill when the saree does, and not into the bag as a favour. These small things are what a wedding kosa leaves the shop with.
An offer for the family you know, not a card for anyone who walks in
Open the page of a family that comes back every festival and see its earlier bills. Give it a discount you set up on this year's saree. A showroom's scratch card goes to anyone, and yours goes to the family whose daughter's wedding sarees came from your shelf.
Why a saree shop's shelf cannot be counted at night, and fall and lace leave without a bill
A shelf that is unfolded all day cannot be counted at night
A family sits on your floor and you open eight sarees for them. Four are bought and four are folded back, some on the wrong shelf. At night you count by eye, and the notebook says twelve in maroon while the shelf holds ten. Nobody can say if two were sold, two were misplaced, or two went out with someone who was only looking.
Fall, lace and thread: the small things that leave without a bill
With a saree a family takes fall cloth, lace, hooks and thread, each worth a few coins and none worth stopping the sale to write. In a month there are hundreds of them, and the drawer holds more than the notebook says. You cannot find where the difference comes from, so you stop looking.
The city showroom has scratch cards, and you have a notebook
Cloth showrooms in the city draw buyers with discounts, gifts and cards to scratch. You cannot match a showroom, but your families come back year after year. The trouble is that you do not know which families come back, how much they take at a wedding, or whether this year's festival bill is bigger than the last.
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Tools for a shop that sells kosa, cotton and ready-made side by side
Bills on your phone
A kosa saree at its piece rate and its blouse cloth at the metre rate, written down as the customer lifts them off the shelf.
UPI payments
The part-payment for a saree, sent on UPI by the bride's uncle from another town, written against her name the same day.
Your own online shop
A page of this season's kosa colours with their borders, forwarded to the bride's family in Raipur, who choose before they make the trip.
Low stock warnings
The plain cloth and the lining that sell out first in the wedding months, shown before the shelf is bare.
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Where kosa is woven, and who your wedding customers buy it from
Kosa comes from a few districts, and the families who buy a wedding saree know where theirs was woven.
- Champa town in Janjgir-Champa is known for the finest Kosa silk sarees with zari borders, which are in demand across India for weddings. Its weavers number in the thousands.
- Bilaspur is one of the districts, with Korba and Janjgir-Champa, whose weavers make GI-certified Kosa silk.
Questions Chhattisgarh cloth shops ask
The bride's family rings from Raipur and wants the last maroon kosa kept for them until tomorrow. What do I do on the call?
Make a bill for the advance they send, naming the maroon kosa. The count then shows it as sold, so no one at the counter sells it again, and the rest of the money goes on the family's page.
Is the kosa on my shelf real kosa or a copy? Can the bill say which I sold?
Yes. Name each item for what it is, with its own rate. The bill carries that name and goes to the customer on WhatsApp.
How do I pick out the families who bought a wedding kosa from me, for an offer before the festival?
Give each family a page when it buys. The page shows what she bought, so before the festival you open the pages that carry a wedding kosa and set the offer for those families only. A family that bought plain cotton is left out of it, and nobody is offered what she did not buy.
What Raipur's showrooms and the Tassar Silk scheme say about cloth
On Dhanteras 2022 Raipur's garment showrooms did good business, Mahalaxmi Cloth Market among the busy markets, and shops drew buyers with discounts, scratch cards and gifts. A small shop answers such offers with what a showroom cannot give: it knows each family by name.
Chhattisgarh produced about 14.63 crore units of Kosa silk in 2015-16 under the state's Tassar Silk scheme, earning Rs 28.54 crore for 41,814 beneficiaries. Kosa is a wild silk, spun from the cocoons of worms that feed on forest trees.