Billing for your toy and gift shop in Meghalaya
Footballs by size, Christmas gifts by the dozen, and a bag of stock bought in one trip to the market.
Tools for a toy shop that buys at the wholesale market and sells to a football-mad town
Orders to suppliers
A list written at the shop and carried to the wholesale market, then checked at home against what the trader sent.
Your own online shop
The shop's page lists the carrom boards, the footballs and the Christmas gifts, so a mother in a far village can open it from the church group's chat and send her list before the carols start.
Daily reports
The weeks of the long rains, when carrom boards and ludo sets sell and footballs sit, read beside the dry months when the footballs go, so the swing is a number.
A bagful bought in one trip, a cane toy for the visitor and a carrom board for the long rains
You buy a bagful at the wholesale market, and unpacking it is a second job
The trip to the wholesale market in Shillong is long, the bag comes home on the bus, and you buy everything at once: cars, dolls, balloons, a carton of balls. Back at the shop you unpack the bag on the floor, and the prices on the slips, the sell rate in your head and the count in the carton do not agree. Some things go on the shelf without a rate, and a customer is quoted whatever you remember. You pay for the same trip's bag three times if a customer is quoted too low.
The long rains, when the football stops and the carrom board starts
In the long rains the grounds are mud and the footballs sit, while carrom boards, ludo and puzzles go out of the door. The shop bought for the dry months and has fewer indoor games than the weeks ask for. The children who come in with a wet umbrella go home with the last puzzle, and the next one is a week away.
A cane top and a bamboo whistle for the visitor, a plastic car for the town's child
In the tourist months visitors look for something made in the hills to take home, a small cane or bamboo toy. The same counter sells plastic cars and dolls to the town's children. The two kinds come from different hands, carry different rates, and the visitor wants a bill she can keep for the gift. When the cane toys run out, nothing on the counter says so until a visitor asks.
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Who comes through a toy shop's door in Shillong, Tura and Ri Bhoi
A toy shop sees every kind of family, and these three districts show where they come from.
- In Shillong, Police Bazaar sells Meghalaya merchandise, regional apparel and handicrafts, and families who shop for clothes there stop by for the children's gifts.
- West Garo Hills' district site lists local makers of tribal-design jewellery and accessories, including Seven Cherri and Amis Jewellery in Tura.
- In Ri Bhoi, Byrnihat has an industrial estate and bamboo and cane work is a local craft, and the families there come to town for gifts.
The wholesale bag entered at home, the size-5 football, and last season's footballs read again
The wholesale bag entered once, with a rate for each thing
As you unpack, enter each item with its count and the rate you will sell it for. The cars, the dolls and the balls are all on the phone before the first customer comes, and a child who points at a doll gets a price from the screen, not from memory.
Each football size and quality its own line
Make the small, the middle and the large football separate items, and the good ball and the cheap ball separate again. A village team's order of six is a bill in seconds. When the large one runs low the warning comes, while the small ones still fill the shelf.
Footballs for the dry months, ordered from last season's numbers
Football is played hardest in the dry months, when the grounds are not mud. Open last season's report and see how many footballs of each size went, in which weeks, and how many were left. This season's order to the wholesaler is made from those numbers, so the large ball is on the shelf when the first village team comes in.
Questions Meghalaya toy and gift shops ask
A village team wants six large footballs. How do I know I have six before I say yes?
Open the large football's count. If only a few are there, you see it at once and can tell the team how many you can give today.
A visitor wants a cane top and a bamboo whistle in one gift. Can the bill tell them from the plastic toys?
Yes. Put cane or bamboo in each name. The visitor keeps the bill with the gift, so the top is still known as cane and the whistle as bamboo long after she has left the state.
A village team orders jerseys in three sizes and pays after its members' fees come in. How do I keep the sizes straight?
Bill the jerseys by size, each size its own item, on the club's page with the day. The club pays when the fees come in, and you read the page then, with every size and count on its lines.
Christmas Eve in Shillong and the market that stocks the state
Shillong decks up for Christmas, and on Christmas Eve 2019 people were seen rushing to the markets to buy goodies. A toy shop's gifts are bought in that rush.
Iewduh, Shillong's oldest market, is the main supplier in the city, and almost the entire state of Meghalaya buys its stock there, EastMojo reported in 2019.