Billing for your beauty parlour and cosmetics shop in Nagaland
A facial, a threading and a cream on one bill, and a new local brand you can count from its first week.
Tools for a Naga parlour that sells services and products from one counter
Bills on your phone
One bill for a December church wedding: the bride's hair and make-up and each bridesmaid's trim, each line at its own rate.
Credit book (khata)
A page for the choir girls who have their hair done before each programme and pay together afterwards.
Low stock warnings
A warning when the lip balms fall low as the cold sets in, before the January winds dry every face.
Daily reports
The Christmas-party week set beside the December wedding days, so you see whether parties or weddings filled the chair.
Your own online shop
A page of the Korean-style creams and serums you stock, sent to the college girls' WhatsApp group.
A service and a cream on one customer, a local brand on trial and the regular who pays monthly
The Christmas-party week with every chair full
In the week before Christmas every office, church and college holds its party, and every young woman in town wants her hair done the same evening. Walk-ins and bookings collide, some pay now and some promise to pay after the party, and the chairs never stop.
A new local cream next to the big names, and nobody knows if it sells
A small maker from the town brings a cream or a hair oil she has made, and you put a few on the shelf to try. They sit beside the well-known tubes. After a month you cannot say whether she should bring more, because no one wrote how many went out and how many are still there. She is a neighbour, and you do not want to be unfair to her, so a number on a page is kinder than a guess.
The December wedding rush with no list
From the first week of December the bookings come in: brides, bridesmaids, mothers and aunts, all for the same few Saturdays. Names go on a wall calendar and advances into a notebook, and on the morning itself three families arrive at once and nobody is sure who has paid what.
Honey, handloom and the hub town: what Nagaland parlour customers talk about
Three places a Nagaland parlour hears about from its customers.
- Phek makes honey, and grows kiwi, tree tomato and persimmon.
- Kohima has a seven-storey State Emporium Complex for Naga handloom and handicrafts, opened on 6 June 2025, where wedding shawls are bought.
- Mokokchung's Ao women are known for weaving shawls, sling bags and the mekhala.
From one bill for the chair and the shelf to a page for each regular's month
The cold-month shelf is ordered once from Dimapur, before the dry weeks
The distributor is in Dimapur, and the hill road decides how often you can order. From November the dry air takes every face, and the cold creams, lip balms and moisturisers go first. So send one order to the distributor in the quantity the last cold weeks needed, and have the shelf full when the November dryness arrives and not after a second trip.
Korean-style skincare counted from the first box
When you start stocking the Korean-style creams the young customers ask for, give each its own item and count. After a month you see which of them sell and which sit, before you order a second box. Young customers often ask for a product by a picture on their phone, so its name on your item list helps you find it fast.
The October booking that the December morning reads
December is the month of weddings, and a family books in October. When she books, write the bride's makeup and the hair set for each aunt on the family's page. In December the morning starts from that page, so nobody is asked again what was booked.
Questions Nagaland parlours and cosmetics shops ask
Can I see whether threading or facials earned more last December?
Yes. Each is an item, so last December's days in the daily report show both rows, and you can set them side by side.
At a church wedding the bride's mother wants the hair set for four aunts and a jar of cream for each. Can the sets and the jars share one bill?
Yes. The hair set is an item with its own rate and no count, and the jar is an item that comes off the shelf. Put the four sets and the four jars on one bill, and the shelf count of the cream falls by four.
Girls from a college hostel come in a group of five each month. Can the group get something off?
Yes. Set a discount for them and it is shown on each girl's bill when she pays, so the group sees what it saved.
A woman in Mokokchung makes soap from hill herbs. Can her soap have its own count?
Yes. Make her soap an item of its own. Its count and its sales stay on their own row, so you can tell her how many sold this month.
Annalia Beauty and the new local makers: beauty in Nagaland
Annalia Beauty, a women-led Dimapur venture, was Nagaland's sole winner at the 2024 MSME Hackathon 3.0 and plans store-plus-academy outlets in Kohima and Guwahati.
A 2023 Eastern Mirror feature calls beauty products an ever-growing yet unexplored industry in Nagaland, where local formulators such as Tsivi Phesao of Kohima are now entering it. A parlour in Nagaland may soon be offered a local cream beside the national brands.