Billing for your beauty parlour and cosmetics shop in Odisha
Four puja nights at the chair, a tin of wax that runs out and five friends who pay apart, each on its own bill.
Why an Odisha parlour loses the puja nights, the wax and face packs and the five friends' bills
The four puja nights, when the chair does not stop
The puja is four nights, and each night is its own day of work: the chair opens in the evening and stays open late. A girl who came on the first night for threading comes on the third for a hair set and a mehendi pattern. The crowd on each night is a little different, and the girl who returns wants something new each time.
Wax, face packs and cotton that the chair uses and nobody counts
The things you sell are counted, a little. The wax, the face packs, the bleach and the cotton that the chair uses up are not sold, and so they are not counted. A tin of wax is finished in a week of puja, and you learn it is finished when the girl is already on the chair with her sleeve pushed up. Wax in the dry weeks is a tin a month, and in the weeks of the puja a tin lasts days.
Five friends, one visit and five different purses
Before a farewell or a function, five friends come together for threading, a facial and a hair-do. Each pays for her own, but they come in one line, so the slip has five names on it and a total. Two of them leave in a hurry, one forgets her change, and the slip is left with a number nobody agrees on. The one who paid first is the one who remembers the amount, and the others remember it differently.
Silk brides, puja crowds and steel-town families: who comes to Odisha's parlours
A parlour or a cosmetics shop sees the whole town, from brides to girls going to college. A few 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.
- Balasore district has been declared Odisha's production and processing cluster for scampi, the freshwater prawn.
From the puja nights read at dawn to five friends, five bills, one visit
The puja nights read at dawn, one by one
Put each threading, facial, mehendi and hair-do on a bill as it is done, and open each day's sales when the doors are shut. The four nights are four separate days, and you read how many of each service were done on the first night and how many on the last.
The wax and face packs counted in, and read every week
Make the wax, the face packs and the cotton items counted in tins and packs. Count them in when they arrive and read the count once a week, so you see how fast a week of puja eats a tin of wax and order the next before the chair is waiting.
Five friends in five chairs, each one's threading, wax or facial on her own line
Five friends come in on the same evening and sit in five chairs. Put the threading, the wax and the facial on each friend's own bill as the chair finishes with her, so the bills close one by one as they stand up. The evening ends without a slip with five names on it.
Tools for a chair that never stops on the puja nights and a shelf of wax and face packs
Daily reports
Each of the four puja nights as its own day, so the first night's threadings and the last night's hair-dos can be read one after the other.
Low stock warnings
A sign that the wax or the face packs are almost gone, before the puja crowd reaches the chair and not after.
Bills on your phone
A bridal makeup and a hair set on one bill, made in the village parlour as the bride gets up from the chair, and sent to the phone of whoever pays.
Questions Odisha parlour owners ask about puja nights, wax and group visits
On the first evening of Raja a line of girls waits for alta and bangles. How do I keep the line moving when each one pays for herself?
Keep the alta and the bangle box as items. Make a bill for each girl in a few seconds and send it to her own phone while the next girl is already choosing.
The wax and face packs go into a package with one price. How do I count them?
Bill the package as one item. Keep the wax and face packs as items counted in tins and packs, and take off by hand what the package used. The count tells you when to order.
After the four puja nights, how do I know how long to keep the chair open next year?
Open the first night's bills and the fourth night's side by side. If the fourth night's threadings are far fewer, the chair can close earlier then. Next year it opens late on the nights that were full and closes early on the last.
The Odia bridal makeup course and the demand for rural parlours
Odisha ran a 30-day Odia Bridal Makeup Course for self-help group women. The first batch had 40 women from 17 districts. A woman who has done such a course may set up a parlour in her own village, and a parlour of that kind keeps its books on a phone.
OdishaPlus reports rising demand for modern beauty and wellness services, including bridal makeup, in Odisha's rural markets, with trained women set to run salons, spas and parlours.