Billing for your beauty parlour and cosmetics counter in Ladakh
A facial, a lip balm and a jar of sea buckthorn cream, each billed as what it is.
From the trekker's three things to the cream a customer remembers by the month
What the last trekker took, shown to the next one who does not know what to ask for
The trekker with the burnt nose does not know what to ask for. Open the bill of the one before him: sun cream, lip balm and cooling gel, each by name. Show him the three names and let him choose. The list that served one trekker answers the next without a guess.
Three soaps billed as three soaps, so each count stays true
Make each soap its own item and bill the three as three lines on a single bill. Each bar comes off its own count, and the ribbon is free. At the end of the month you can see which of the three the visitors reached for first. A bar of apricot soap and a bar of sea buckthorn soap are not the same stock.
The sun cream he bought on the first day of the trek
A trekker comes down at the end of his trek and wants the sun cream he bought on the first day. He cannot say the name. Open the sales of that day and read what he took. You find the tube in a minute and sell him the same one, and he goes out thinking you remember every customer.
Why a Leh beauty shop is asked about a trekker's burnt nose, a bar of apricot soap and a jar with no label
A trekker with a burnt nose and no idea what to ask for
A trekker walks in after days at height with a burnt nose, split lips and dry hands. He points at the shelf and does not know the names. You choose a sun cream, a lip balm and a cooling gel, wrap them in the same bag, and at the end of the day there is a single line in the notebook that says three things and nothing else. Tomorrow another one comes with the same face, and the same question, and the answer is in your head only.
Three soaps tied with a ribbon for a gift
A visitor wants three different handmade soaps, an apricot one, a sea buckthorn one and a plain one, tied up together as a gift for someone at home. He asks which group made which. You know the soaps by their wrappers and their smell, not by their group, so you tell him what you remember and he buys on your word.
A jar with a handwritten label, or none
The women's groups bring jars of cream and oil with a label written by hand, or sometimes with no label at all. Two jars from two groups look alike and are not the same to the skin. A customer who liked one asks for it by name next month, and you go by the lid and by memory. A jar that sold well is often the one nobody can order again by name.
What a Leh beauty parlour and cosmetics counter keeps on one phone
Bills on your phone
The trekker's sun cream, lip balm and cooling gel on one bill that he takes home to show where the cream came from, and three bars of soap tied with a ribbon on the next, each bar from its own count.
Low stock warnings
A warning on sun cream and lip balm for the trekking months, and on hand cream for the first cold week, each level set once. A trekker's burnt nose is the best reminder of what to order.
Godown stock
The jars brought by each group counted in the back room before they go on the shelf, so a group's delivery and the shelf are never confused.
Questions Leh parlour owners ask about trekkers, soaps and jars from the groups
A visitor takes eight bars of apricot soap for her relatives and pays for the lot. Is that eight lines or one?
One line with a quantity of eight, at the apricot soap's rate. The apricot soap's count goes down by eight, and a box, if she buys one, is a line of its own.
Two women's groups make a jar I like. How do I know which group's jar to reorder?
Give each group a supplier page and put its name in the jar's item. The count shows which group's jar sold, and the next order goes on the page of that group.
A trek-weary customer takes a facial and then buys a jar on her way out. Can one bill hold both?
Yes. Put the facial and the jar on one bill as two lines, the jar taken off the stock and the facial not. She pays once on her way out, by UPI or in cash, and her bill reads in the order she did things.
A hundred sea buckthorn products and seven hundred women's groups
The Union Science Minister said in November 2021 that about 100 sea buckthorn products, including creams, oils and soaps, would give Ladakh's local entrepreneurs gainful employment. A beauty counter in Leh is where those creams, oils and soaps meet the customer. The same jars, bought as gifts, travel in a rucksack to homes far from Ladakh.
More than 700 self-help groups in Ladakh engage about 6,777 women in tailoring, baking, sanitary pad production and apricot and sea buckthorn preserve making. The jar on a Leh shelf is, more often than not, the work of one of these groups, and a shop owner who knows the group by name sells it better. Many of them bring their jars to town on a market day, a few at a time.