Billing for your cloth and garment shop in Mizoram
Puan by the length, shirts by the size, and every family's udhaar on a page of its own.
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When Christmas brings the village families to the cloth counter
Christmas and the families who come in from the villages
A family from a village buys for six or eight people at once, each with a size, a colour and a different idea of the rate, and the counter disappears behind folded cloth. They will pay half now and the rest after the new year. The slip for that second half is the first thing to go missing, and nobody remembers which puan was whose.
Stock in three places: the loom, the shelf and the parcel
A shop that makes some of its own cloth has stock in more than one place. A length is still on the loom, another is folded on the shelf, and a third is wrapped for someone who ordered it. When a customer asks for a pattern you sold last week, you cannot say whether one piece is left or whether it is the last one on the loom.
The shirt that comes back in a different size
Cloth goes by the length and ready-made clothes go by the size, and one bill often carries a puan length and a shirt size together. When the shirt is exchanged after Christmas, the puan on the same bill stays sold, so the exchange touches one line of the bill and not the other. Do ten of them in a day and the shelf and the notebook tell two different stories.
The pattern on the bill, the sizes before the rush and a clean exchange
The pattern on the bill, so last year's puan can be found again
Make an item for each pattern and colour of puan, and the pattern is on every bill. When a customer comes back and says she wants the one like her mother's, you open her page and read the pattern she took last year. You know the roll to look for and whether any of it is left, before she has finished describing it.
In the week after Christmas, an exchange can carry a shirt size and a puan length on one bill
After Christmas many shirts come back for another size, and the same customer may take a puan by the length in the same visit. Cancel the first bill, make a new one that holds the new shirt and the puan, and put the returned shirt back on the stock of its size. The puan comes off the length you hold, each at its own unit, and the shelf and the paper agree before the next customer reaches the counter.
Ordering the sizes that go first before the rush
The small and medium shirts for children finish before the other sizes. In the weeks before Christmas look at those two sizes before any other, and send the order while families are not yet at the counter asking. After Christmas, read the daily sales of those weeks and order to what sold.
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Thenzawl looms and border gates: where Mizoram cloth and customers come from
A cloth shop sells to the people who come in, and where they come from depends on the district. Here are three.
- Thenzawl, 43 km from Aizawl, is a hub of traditional Mizo handloom weaving. A 2017 survey counted 2,003 looms and 1,847 weavers.
- Champhai carries the border trade with Myanmar through the Zokhawthar trade centre, which handles essentials, drinks, bread, edibles and electronic gadgets.
- About 60 percent of Lawngtlai's people depend on agriculture and allied work, so a cloth shop there sells to farm families.
A trust of artisans in Maharashtra that put its shop on a phone
Questions Mizoram cloth shops ask about patterns, collecting and whose page it is
How many metres of last year's puan pattern are still in the room of rolls?
Open the item for that pattern. Its count is in metres, so the length left is on the phone. If it is short of what the customer wants, you tell her before anyone climbs to the room.
A puan is cut and wrapped by length on Friday and collected on Sunday. Has the length left my count?
Yes. The metres came off the pattern's count when you made the bill on Friday, so the roll on the shelf is right even though the wrapped puan waits behind the dawr until Sunday.
A family from a village buys a puan for each woman of the house before Christmas and pays half now and the rest when the New Year comes. Whose name goes on the page?
The name of the one who pays. The puan for each woman is a line, with her name, and the half paid is noted at the foot.
Bada Bazaar and the puan trade of Aizawl
Bada Bazaar is Aizawl's main market and has a large area selling puan cloth. Products made from it are also sent to Kolkata and Guwahati for sale.
Bada Bazaar shopkeepers rent their shop, or dawr, from the local government at Rs 1,700 a month, and women are largely both the weavers and the sellers.