Billing for your garment shop in Gujarat
Choli, chaniya and dupatta on one bill, and the Navratri crowd on one phone.
The set billed in three pieces, the alteration billed on the next visit
A choli in 36 where she took 34, and the mirror-work set priced above the plain
Put the size and the work in the item's name: choli 34 plain, choli 34 mirror-work, choli 36 plain, each with its own rate and its own count. When the daughter comes back wanting a 36 in place of the 34, you see at once whether a 36 is on the shelf. The mirror-work choli is priced above the plain one on the bill, so nobody works out the difference at the counter.
The hand-tied and the printed as two separate items
Hand-tied bandhani and printed bandhani look alike on a hanger, and the family remembers only which one it liked. When the exchange comes the next week, the line on the bill says which was sold, so the talk is over in a minute and not about whose memory is right.
The Surat order written down, the lot ticked off on arrival
Write the order to the Surat agent on your phone before the call, with the count of each colour. When the lot is opened, note what arrived against it. What is short stays on the page, and the claim to the agent is a line you can read out rather than a memory of the call.
Three weeks before Navratri, a Gujarat garment shop sells every piece of a set on a loose slip
A chaniya choli is three sales, and Navratri is nine nights of them
In the weeks before Navratri, a girl takes a chaniya, her mother asks for a matching choli in another size, and an aunt wants the dupatta in a second colour. Each piece is a separate sale and goes on a separate slip, and the mirror-work ones cost more than the plain. The family leaves, comes back for the right size, and now two slips lie in two places.
Hand-tied bandhani and printed bandhani, hanging side by side
The sari that is tied by hand, knot by knot, hangs beside the one that is only printed to look the same. They carry different rates, and a customer cannot always tell which she is holding. The slip says just 'bandhani sari'. When she comes back the next week to exchange, the shop and the customer each remember a different one.
The Surat lot, checked against a bill nobody can find
Much of the cloth on a Gujarat shelf is ordered from wholesalers in Surat and comes by transport in a lot. When the lot is opened, three pieces are short and one colour is wrong. The order was a phone call and the bill came later, so the claim to the agent rests on what you remember of the call.
Surat cloth, Rajkot prints and Ahmedabad bazaars behind a Gujarat garment shop
Three places a Gujarat cloth shop hears about, from the lot that arrives to the lane next door.
- Surat accounts for 70% of India's rough diamond cutting and polishing and 40% of its man-made fabric production, says the city corporation.
- Rajkot's Soni goldsmiths and silver craftsmen make jewellery, and the city is also known for textile printing and for metal and wood carving.
- Manek Chowk in Ahmedabad is a vegetable market in the morning, one of India's largest gold, silver and jewellery markets by day, and a food market at night.
.jpg){kind=link}
.jpg){kind=link}
What a Gujarat garment counter uses between the Surat lot and the garba night
Bills on your phone
The mirror-work chaniya, the choli and the red bandhani dupatta appear as three lines on one bill that reaches the family's WhatsApp before the dupatta is folded.
Credit book (khata)
A page for the family that buys for the garba nights: the chaniya on the first visit, and the choli the daughter needs on the second, each on its own line.
Orders to suppliers
A page for each Surat wholesaler, with the order and what arrived, so a short lot is visible the day it is opened.
Low stock warnings
A warning when the plain dupattas that every set needs are about to finish, a week before the rush and not on the first night.
GST bills
A family buying sarees for the whole bride's side asks for a GST bill, and the tax is worked out saree by saree on the same sale.
Daily reports
The days before Navratri, when size 34 and size 36 cholis went first, kept day by day, so you know what to reorder from the Surat agent in August.
Artisan clusters whose orders and stock stopped living in separate notebooks
Questions Gujarat garment shops ask about sets, alterations and Surat lots
A woman takes a hand-tied bandhani sari and a metre of the printed one for the blouse. How do I write both?
The hand-tied sari is an item sold by the piece, with its own rate, and the printed bandhani is an item sold by the metre. The blouse length is the metres cut from the printed roll, so the roll's count falls by those metres and the tied sari's count by one.
The mirror-work chaniyas stay in the back and come out on request. Can I count them apart from the plain ones?
Yes. Give the mirror-work chaniyas their own items, separate from the plain. The count then says how many heavy ones are still in the back, without anyone going to look.
A girl wants the red chaniya with a green dupatta from another set. Can I bill the pair she chose?
Yes, if the chaniya and each dupatta colour are items of their own. Put the red chaniya and the green dupatta on one bill, and the two counts fall separately. The phone tells you whether that green dupatta is left before you take her to the shelf.
Surat, the cloth city behind a Gujarat garment shelf
Surat is home to India's largest synthetic cloth market, with over 75,000 textile traders and over 4.5 crore metres of cloth produced every day. The market sits in your own state, so for a Gujarat garment shop the order, the lot and any claim about it all happen close by.
Before Diwali 2024, Surat traders sent over 80,000 textile packages by 11 special goods trains to northern and north-eastern states, as trucks ran short. The rush before the festival is large enough to fill whole goods trains, and the cloth for a Diwali window starts its journey weeks earlier.