Billing for your garment and saree shop in Maharashtra
Sarees by the piece, cloth by the metre and the family that pays after the wedding, on one phone.
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Where Maharashtra's cloth is woven
Maharashtra's cloth comes from a few districts, and a garment shop owner knows them by what they weave:
- Thane makes powerloom fabrics, and Bhiwandi is known for textiles.
- Solapur is a major textile hub, famous for its woven chaddars (cotton sheets) and towels.
- Jalgaon is a major business centre for tea, gold, pulses, cotton and bananas.
What a cloth counter in Maharashtra needs
Bills on your phone
The twelve lines of a Diwali family's choice, sizes and colours and a cut of dress cloth, added up while they argue over the pink one.
Credit book (khata)
A wedding family's six sarees and its first payment on one page, with the balance at the foot until the function is paid for.
Offers for regular customers
An offer for the households who come to you for every wedding and festival, so that they have a reason not to try the next lane.
Orders to suppliers
A reorder to the wholesaler for the saree shades that sold out first in the Diwali fortnight.
Online orders
Orders from your own online shop for a saree a customer saw on your page, so the family can send the choice before they come.
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Why a Maharashtra cloth shop is lakhs of shoppers in the festival fortnight and quiet after
A festival fortnight that fills the shop, and the quiet after it
In the fortnight before Diwali, the lane outside a Maharashtra cloth shop fills with families, and the shop fills with them. Five people buy for one household, each wants a different size and colour, and the bill has twelve lines. In the weeks after, the same shop has nobody. Next year you remember only that it was a rush, not which colours were sold first.
The wedding saree on credit
A family comes for the wedding. They choose six sarees and some dress cloth, pay a part, and promise the rest after the function. Another family has an account from last year that is still open. Each has a page in your book, the pages are different in how they are written, and when someone says the amount was less, you look through a column of rubbed pencil.
The nine-yard saree, the blouse piece and the tailor's charge
A nine-yard saree is often bought with a blouse piece, and the tailor who stitches the blouse takes the measure from your shop. The saree goes in one line, the blouse cloth by the length in another, and the tailor's charge is something you add by hand. At the end of the day it is the blouse line that goes missing.
The wedding saree, the Diwali shirt and the length of dress cloth
The rush of twelve lines, billed in a minute
Each size, colour and design is a line on your phone. A family of five picks twelve items, and the bill adds up while they are still deciding. When the evening comes you read which colours and sizes sold first.
The family that buys its Diwali clothes from you every year
Before Diwali a family comes for clothes for the whole house. Its page still holds last year's bills, so you read what each person took, with the size and the colour, before the family has finished saying who it is buying for. You start from last year's size and not from a guess.
A length cut from the roll that is counted
Keep a Paithani border sold by the metre as an item counted in metres. Selling a length takes those metres off, and the rack agrees with the phone at the end of the month.
Questions Maharashtra garment and saree shop owners ask
A family pays for a Paithani in parts over the months before the wedding. Can the page show which saree it is?
Yes. A Paithani is one saree with one rate, so make it an item of its own. The family's page carries that one saree through the months to the wedding, with each part paid as a line.
The red nine-yard saree is sold out, not the blue. Can I see that before the family asks?
Keep each colour as its own item. The red shows no count, the blue shows its count.
A nine-yard saree comes with a blouse piece that I cut for the tailor. Does the blouse piece come off its own count?
Yes. Keep the blouse piece as an item apart from the saree. When the tailor takes the cut piece, the blouse count comes down and the saree's does not, so your phone shows a saree whose blouse piece is gone.
The Paithani and the Diwali lanes of Pune
The Paithani sari, woven in pure silk and gold zari and called the 'mahavastra' of Maharashtra, comes from Paithan on the Godavari and has long been favoured by Maharashtrian brides. A shop that sells one holds a single costly piece for a long time.
At Diwali, Pune's Laxmi Road and Mandai area fills with lakhs of shoppers buying clothes, lanterns, lamps, rangoli and puja items, with festive goods arriving in markets fifteen days earlier. A cloth shop in that crowd bills by the minute.