Billing for your toy shop in Karnataka
A shelf of wooden toys, gift boxes and small pieces, billed and counted on your phone.
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From the wooden-toy rack to the birthday gift counter
Each wooden piece and each plastic piece on its own line
At closing, the day's report shows the painted dolls, the wooden tops, the plastic cars and the gift sets, each on its own line. Within a season you know whether the hand-painted shelf or the birthday shelf is earning more of your rent. Rent is paid by the month, but the shelves earn by the season.
One batch from the maker has to last both good seasons
A toy shop's year has two good seasons, Dasara and Christmas, and the maker's batch comes once. The batch has to last through both seasons, and the second season begins with whatever the first left on the shelf. If Dasara takes too much, Christmas has nothing; if it takes too little, the shelf waits all year.
The festival lot noted the day it arrives, with its rate
When the lot of lacquered toys comes from the workshop, note what arrived and the rate you paid. Each lot is on your phone with its date. Weeks later, when a customer asks for the red top, you know which lot it came from and what it cost you, and the price on the shelf is set with that in front of you.
Why a Karnataka toy shelf sits quiet for weeks and then empties
Every batch from the workshop comes out a little different
Hand-lacquered wooden toys come to the shop in batches from a workshop, and no two batches are quite alike. The red of this top is deeper than the last, the doll's face is a little rounder, and a customer who wants the same piece she bought last Dasara cannot get it. The owner knows each batch by its look, and a helper who does not know the shop cannot tell a new batch from an old one on the shelf.
The rush comes in a few weeks, and the stock waits all year
A toy shop earns most of its year in a handful of weeks, around festivals, school holidays and a run of birthdays. In those weeks the best pieces go in a day, and you find out only when a customer asks for the third time. In the quiet months a shelf of unsold wooden toys is cash that cannot be used, and nothing tells you which of the pieces have been there longest.
A wooden doll, its box and its bill, in three separate moments
A visitor picks a wooden doll, and you wrap it and hunt through the shelf for a box that fits. The bill is made only after the box is tied, so the price is told before the wrapping and the sum is known after it. If he adds a small toy at the last minute, the box has to be opened again.
Tools for a counter of wooden and plastic toys
Low stock warnings
A warning when the painted dolls and tops that go first at Dasara are down to the last few, in time to tell a family.
Credit book (khata)
A page for the grandparent who pays a little each week for the toy chosen for Dasara, each payment a dated line, the toy handed over when the last line is written.
Daily reports
The Dasara weeks and the Christmas weeks read side by side, so you see which of the two seasons took the wooden pieces.
The families who walk into a toy shop across Karnataka
A toy shop sells to whoever lives around it, and the work of a district tells you who walks in.
- In Mysuru, silk is mainly grown in the district, in a state that makes nearly 70% of India's mulberry silk, and Mysuru silk is sold through KSIC.
- Belagavi has 24 sugar factories and 200 foundries producing over 70,000 tons of automotive and industrial castings, so many of the families who buy toys there are paid by a factory.
- Ballari holds 25% of India's iron ore reserves, JSW's Vijayanagar steel works is at Toranagallu, and 75% of workers depend on farming, so a toy shop there serves both steel families and farm families.
- Tumakuru district has 9 APMC market yards, at Tumakuru, Tiptur, Gubbi, Sira, Huliyar, Pavagada, Madhugiri, Kunigal and Turuvekere, which bring farm families to town.
Questions Karnataka toy shop owners ask
A school wants small wooden toys for its annual day, but the maker's batch comes later. How do I hold the school's lot?
Send the order to the maker with the school's name on it, and note the batch when it arrives. Bill the school when it takes the toys.
Families arrange dolls for Gombe Habba in clay, wood or plaster. Which kind did they take first?
Keep the clay, wooden and plaster dolls as three items, and the sales show which kind went first in the Dasara weeks. Fill the shelf with that kind in front.
A customer wants the red top she bought last Dasara, but this batch is a different red. How do I find which one she means?
The lot is named by its colour and its date, so the old red and the new red are two lines. If only the new red remains, you tell her before the top is billed, and show her the two reds side by side.
Golu dolls and the two good seasons of a Channapatna toy
GI-tagged Channapatna wooden toys, made in Ramanagara district, are a constant for Navaratri Golu (Gombe Habba) doll displays and for gifts. Families set dolls out on tiered steps at home for the festival, and a shop that stocks these toys has something they come looking for at that time.
A fourth-generation Channapatna toy maker says sales are good only twice a year, during Dasara and Christmas. If the maker sees that pattern, a shop that sells his toys will see it too, which is why the weeks outside those two seasons are the time to count what is left and order the next lot.