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Billing for your cloth and saree shop in Odisha

Each saree, each packet on hold and each size gets its own line on your phone, not a chit under the counter.

A shopkeeper holding up a red embroidered sari for a group of women customers in a fabric shop in Varanasi
A shopkeeper holding up a red embroidered sari for a group of women customers in a fabric shop in Varanasi Photo: Jorge Royan, CC BY-SA 3.0

Berhampur silk, Cuttack filigree and Sundargarh mills: where Odisha cloth shops trade

Cloth in Odisha comes from weaving towns, and a saree shop owner knows them by name. A few of the districts, and what the people there do.

  • Berhampur in Ganjam is often called the silk city of India, and its Phoda Kumbha saree and Joda craft got a GI tag in 2012.
  • Cuttack is home to silver filigree, and its craftsmen get business from the city's Durga Puja, which had 165 puja committees in 2019.
  • Sundargarh is an industrial district of Odisha, with a steel plant, a fertilizer plant, a cement factory and spinning mills.
A weaver at a wooden handloom with white warp threads stretched in front of him, Sonepur
A weaver at a wooden handloom with white warp threads stretched in front of him, Sonepur Photo: Lincon Mishra, CC BY-SA 3.0

Why a Sambalpuri saree loses its weaver's note on an Odisha shelf

  • The weaver's name and rate fall off the saree

    A Sambalpuri saree comes from one weaver or one society, and what you paid for it depends on who wove it. Once it sits on the shelf with ten others, that note is a slip of paper that falls off. At the end of the season you cannot say whose sarees went quickly and whose stayed folded, so you order again by feel.

  • Sarees on hold behind the counter, and the wrong packet at the door

    In puja weeks the counter holds sarees for fall and pico stitching, blouse pieces for the tailor and sarees kept aside till Friday, each in a packet with a chit. When the customers crowd in on Friday evening the chit is torn or the name is smudged, and a Bandha saree goes home with the wrong woman.

  • Frocks and shirts by the size, and the size that is gone

    Ready-made frocks, shirts and kurtas come in sizes, and the sizes do not run out evenly. The medium is gone by the second day of the puja week and the extra large is still folded on the shelf. You find out only when a father stands at the counter with his son and you have nothing in his size.

From a Bomkai saree on the shelf to the packet that goes home with the right woman

  1. Whose Bandha and whose Bomkai went first this season, read when it is time to order

    Put the weaver's name in the title of each weave, beside your selling rate. After a season the stock lines tell you whose Bandha and whose Bomkai went first. When you order again, you ask those weavers first and ask the slow ones for fewer.

  2. The Sambalpuri weaver, paid on market day for what sold

    Sambalpuri sarees come from weavers in the next block, and each saree has its own pattern. When he comes on market day, the count shows how many of his sold since his last visit, so he is paid for those and takes back what he wants to.

  3. Cotton rolls that sit through the monsoon damp

    In the monsoon the cotton rolls at the back take the damp, and a roll that smells of it sells slowly. Keep each roll as its own item with its metres, and the count shows the rolls that have not moved for weeks, so they are aired and brought to the front before the damp sets in.

A shopkeeper behind a counter of folded Sambalpuri sarees at Ekamra Haat, Bhubaneswar
A shopkeeper behind a counter of folded Sambalpuri sarees at Ekamra Haat, Bhubaneswar Photo: Psubhashish, CC BY-SA 3.0

Tools for sarees by the piece, packets on hold and ready-mades by the size

  • Bills on your phone

    A Bandha saree by the piece and a frock by the size, with the weave named on the line the customer reads on her phone.

  • Credit book (khata)

    A page in the family's name for the dhoti, the sarees and the frocks of one puja, each dated, with the payments written on the same page.

  • Orders to suppliers

    A note of the sarees that arrived when the weaver or the weavers' society brought them to the shop, written against the society's bill.

  • Low stock warnings

    A sign that the medium frock or a colour of dress cloth is running out, before the puja crowd is at the counter.

  • Offers for regular customers

    When the new Bandha lot arrives, the pages of the buyers who asked for it tell you whom to ring first, and their discount waits under their names.

Odisha weaver companies that took their handlooms online with NABARD

Weaver producer companies such as the Dunguripali Bunkar company at Sonepur and the Biraja Handloom company in Jajpur got their own online shops, digital billing and stock records through NABARD Odisha's work with Bharatrath.

Questions Odisha cloth and saree shops ask

A weaver comes on market day for his money and for the sarees that did not sell. What do I tell him?

Open his page. It shows what he left and what has sold since, so you pay him for the sold ones on the spot and the rest is the number he takes home.

In the festival week a woman leaves her saree for fall and pico stitching and comes for it on the day she names. How do I stop the packets being mixed?

Write her name and the day into the stitching job's item, and on the packet's chit, so the page and the packet carry the same name. When she comes, the packet with her name is the one that goes into her hand, and the bill is made that day.

I want to see which weaves went fastest in Raja week. Where do I look?

Open each day's sales from those days. The bills list every saree that was sold, so you can read off how many Bandha and how many Bomkai went and buy to that next year.

Frocks come in many sizes. Do I make one item or many?

One item for each size, so each size has its own count and the phone shows which sizes are almost gone.

More questions every shop asks

Boyanika and the five weaves of Odisha handlooms

Boyanika, Odisha's state handloom cooperative, sources from over 500 primary weavers' cooperative societies. A primary society is a group of weavers who sell their cloth together. Boyanika sells Sambalpuri Bandha, Bomkai, Khandua, Gopalpur Tussar and Kotpad weaves.

Boyanika was set up in 1956 under the Odisha handlooms department. It has 41 exclusive shops across Odisha, New Delhi and Kolkata, and it reported Rs 233.56 crore turnover in 2025-26.