Billing for your cloth and garment shop in Punjab
Hand-worked phulkari, turban cloth by the colour and the suit at the tailor, all on your phone.
From the one-of-a-kind phulkari to the groom's safa and the dozen at the tailor's
Each hand-worked piece as a line of its own, gone from the count when it sells
Give each phulkari piece its own item with the rate you set for it. When it sells, its count goes to nothing, and the shelf shows what is left. The next customer who asks for the green one gets the right answer. A second customer asking for the same pattern gets its own line and its own count. A shop that has twelve such pieces on the rail knows by name which twelve.
Each colour of turban cloth as an item, with its length counted off as it is cut
Make each colour its own item, sold by the metre. Every cut takes its length off the roll, and the screen shows how many metres of each colour are left. When the groom's family names a shade, you see at once whether the second length is there.
The suits still with the tailor, against the wedding day
Send the tailor an order for the suits the wedding families are waiting for, and note each batch as it comes back. The page shows which suits are still with him, so a family that asks about its suit for the wedding day is told how things stand, not given a hope. The tailor reads the same list as you do.
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Tools that fit a phulkari and turban-cloth shop in Punjab
Bills on your phone
The groom's shade written in the turban item's name, so the bill and the shelf name the same colour.
Daily reports
Metres of each turban colour and pieces of each suit sold on each day of the wedding season, so next year's buying can follow them.
Orders to suppliers
An order for a turban colour with the dye lot asked for, and the length that arrived noted against the length ordered, so a short roll is seen on the page.
Why a Punjab cloth shop counts hand-worked pieces, turban colours and tailor's work by guess
Hand-worked pieces, each one different, and only one of each
A phulkari dupatta or a shawl is made by hand, so no two are the same. A customer holds up the green one and asks the rate, and you have to remember which piece it was and what you decided to ask. When it sells, the stock count in your head still says you have it. And a customer who has paid for the one she held up does not like to be told it was the other.
Turban cloth in forty colours, and the groom who wants the right one
Turban cloth hangs in your shop in many colours, sold by the length. For a wedding a groom's family wants a particular shade, and a cousin wants the same one in a second length. The stock of each colour is a few rolls, and you only find a colour has finished when you reach for it.
The groom's suit cloth, sold weeks before the wedding
You sell a groom the cloth for his suit, and the tailor next door must finish it before the wedding day. The cloth has left your shelf, the suit has not reached the groom, and on the last evening nobody can say whose cut is on which table. The tailor works from memory, and a mix-up is settled by whoever shouts last.
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Hosiery, textile and the units Batala has lost in Punjab
Punjab's cloth trade rests on its own mills and workshops, and the districts show where.
- Ludhiana's biggest industries are hosiery and textile, followed by cycles, cycle parts, machine tools and auto parts.
- Batala in Gurdaspur district has lost 60 per cent of its industrial units, and revival remains a distant hope (August 2026).
A craft store group that put its stock in one list
Questions a Punjab cloth shop owner asks
Turban cloth is dyed in lots, and a roll from a later lot is a shade off. How do I keep the lots apart?
Put the dye lot in the item's name beside the colour, like ivory, lot 2. Two lots of one colour are two items, so the groom's turban and his brother's are cut from the same lot.
A groom's family wants the same shade in a second length for a cousin. Can I see if the roll has enough?
Yes. The count of that colour shows the metres left on the roll, so you can say yes or no before you unroll it.
Can I see which turban shades the grooms asked for in the first wedding weeks and which in the last?
Yes. Open the early wedding weeks and the late ones and read the metres of each colour in each. The shades that led at the start and the ones that led at the end are the two lists you buy from next year.
Festive seasons and cold seasons in the Punjab cloth trade
In an Amritsar festive season, salaried families cut spending on suiting-shirting, branded apparel and ready-made garments, retailers said. At a cloth shop that cut shows in the bill itself: fewer lines on a family's bill, or a suiting length shorter than last year's, before any season's total is added.
In a delayed-winter season, Ludhiana winter-wear makers offered 20 per cent retail discounts in December, later 30 per cent, and some big brands sold at 40 per cent off. A shop with last winter's days in front of it can see what a late cold did to its own sales. Such notes are worth keeping in a book of days, and the phone is a better book than a notebook that can be lost.