Billing for your toy and doll shop in Puducherry
Terracotta, papier mache and cotton dolls, each counted, billed and kept track of on one phone.
Handicrafts in Yanam and cottage industries at Polagam: the makers around a doll shop
A doll shop buys from makers in the small industries of several regions.
- Coir making and handicrafts are the small and medium industries of Yanam.
- Polagam is the area set aside as Karaikal's industrial hub, alongside several small cottage industries.
Tools for a counter of terracotta, papier mache and cotton dolls
Daily reports
Which dolls sold each day, so the next lot you ask a maker for follows what sold and not what is dusty on the shelf. A few weeks of such days show which kind of doll, terracotta, papier mache or cotton, is the favourite.
Online orders
An order for a terracotta doll to a far address, arriving with the doll's name and size, so you know how much packing it needs before the parcel is closed.
From the maker's cartload to the gift bought on the way to the beach
The display doll and the boxed doll counted apart
Keep the doll on the shelf as one count and the doll in the box behind as another. A shelf that looks full and a box that is empty are no longer the same thing, since each count stands on its own, and the maker's next lot is sized to what actually sold.
The bill line says cotton, terracotta or painted figure, and the size
When a visitor asks whether the doll is the same as the one at the emporium, the line on the bill says what she is buying: the cotton doll, the terracotta doll or the large painted figure, with its size. A visitor who is comparing two dolls can see the material and the size on the line before she pays, and a doll bought for a grandchild far away has its description on the bill that goes with it.
The cracked doll sold at a rate of its own, not thrown away
A doll with a small crack in the glaze is not worth the full rate and not worth throwing. Make it an item of its own with a lower rate and a count, and sell it from a tray at the counter. The day's sales show how many cracked dolls went, and the count of whole dolls on the shelf is left alone.
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Why a Puducherry doll shop counts its cracks as carefully as its sales
The doll that cracks between the maker's cart and the shelf
Terracotta and plaster dolls break easily. One cracks in the cart, one on the shelf, one in a child's hand at the counter. Each is a loss, and none is written. At the end of the month the shelf holds fewer dolls than the notebook says, and you cannot tell the cracked from the lost. A customer who sees the crack at the counter asks for the next one, and the shop has no way of showing whether there is one.
A cloth doll for a child and a large figure for a gift on one shelf
The same shop sells a small stuffed doll that a child buys with pocket money and a large painted figure that someone carries home as a gift. They are bought by different people, at different rates, in different numbers, and the notebook gives both one line. The child leaves with the doll she chose, and the parent is left with a rate that neither of them is sure was the right one for that doll.
The government emporium's price in the customer's head
A visitor has just seen the same kind of doll at a handicraft emporium and arrives at your counter with that rate in mind. Her question is whether yours is the same doll. You have the maker, the material and the size in your head, and none of it is on the bill.
Questions a Puducherry toy and doll seller asks about breakage, makers and gift buyers
Two makers bring me terracotta dolls, and more of one maker's lot crack. Can I see whose lot cracked more?
Note each maker's lot on his own page when it comes, and take each cracked doll off the count with the day. At season's end set the cracked dolls beside the two pages and see whose lot cracked more.
A child drops a doll at the counter and it cracks. Is that the same loss as a doll cracked in the cart?
No. A doll that cracked in the cart is the maker's to answer for, and one dropped at the counter is yours. Note beside each which kind of crack it was, so at the month's end the two kinds are two separate numbers, and you can show the maker his.
A trader wants six small silk dolls and six large ones. Is that one line on the bill?
No, two lines on one bill. The trader reads six small and six large on his copy and sees what each size cost him, so he can set his own price on each when he sells.
Puducherry Bommai and the stuffed dolls on the Beach Road list
Puducherry's District Industries Centre lists cotton and silk stuffed dolls priced Rs 70 to Rs 2,000, with trade enquiries to PUDUMAI on Beach Road, Pondicherry. A shop that stocks dolls across so wide a range of rates needs each one as its own item, not one line for all of them.
Dolls of terracotta, papier mache or plaster of paris are a Puducherry speciality, called Puducherry Bommai, and are sold in handicraft emporia across the territory. A toy shop beside them sells the same kind of dolls to the same visitors, and what it offers on top is a bill the buyer can carry home.