Billing for your footwear shop in Rajasthan, mojaris to sandals
The right size in the right colour, and the wedding order that was promised for the fifteenth.
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Tools for a counter of mojaris, chappals and sandals
Bills on your phone
Style, size and colour on each line, so a woman who comes back for the mojari she bought for her daughter finds the same pair again.
Low stock warnings
A warning when a common size of a style is down to one pair, before the wedding weeks.
Daily reports
Which sizes sold out first in the wedding months, kept for the next order to the maker.
Rajasthan's districts and the feet that walk in from them
A footwear shop in Rajasthan sells to people from every district, and the talk at the counter is about their work.
- Jodhpur is a major hub for carved wooden furniture, wrought iron and handicrafts, and it has a handicraft special economic zone at Boranada.
- Johari Bazaar in Jaipur is the hub for gemstone jewellery, and Tripolia Bazaar is known for lac bangles and textiles.
- Udaipur has miniature paintings, marble carvings and the Shilpgram craft village.
- In Nagaur the dried red chilli trade is huge, and the cattle fair is held every November.
- Ajmer has feldspar grinding, cement, marble, granite and salt industries, among others that work with minerals.
What came from the maker, a pair on order, embroidered and plain apart
The bag promised for Friday that came on Monday
A bag of pairs is promised for Friday and comes on Monday. In between, the customer who asks for a pair in his size is told what the shelf holds, and not what was promised. When the bag arrives, note its pairs in with their style, size and number, and the shelf shows them that day, so the next customer is not promised what is still on the road.
The embroidered pair on order for the fifteenth
Open a page in the customer's name for a pair that the household in Jodhpur is making. The advance goes on it with the date, and when the pair arrives and is paid for, what was left is cleared. At any hour the page shows what a customer still owes.
Whose pairs sold fastest, read house by house
Name each pair for the household that made it. The daily report then lists the households apart, and after the wedding weeks you see whose pairs sold fastest, embroidered or plain, and ask that house for more. The embroidered pairs and the plain ones come from different houses, and the numbers say which house to ask and which to leave.
A wall of pairs where size eight in black is always the one that is gone
Pairs arrive from households a few at a time
A shop that sells embroidered mojaris buys from households that make a few pairs at a time. The pairs come in bags on different days, in different sizes and colours, and are put on the shelf as they arrive. Nobody writes down what came in on which day, and the shop does not know what it has until a customer asks. The shop also has no record of which household's pairs sold first and which sat on the shelf.
Twelve pairs for one wedding party, no two the same size
A wedding party walks in together. The bride's side wants pairs to match their dresses, the groom's side wants a plain pair, and the small cousins want any pair that fits. Each pair has its colour and its size, twelve in all and no two alike. The shelf holds one of each, so one wrong pull from the wall breaks the set. The wedding will not wait for a second trip to the shop next week.
The bride's family and the farmer's feet
Two kinds of customer come to a mojari shop. One buys a thin embroidered pair for the bride's trousseau, the other a thick leather pair for the field. They look at different shelves and pay different prices, and the shop remembers the first kind by their wedding and the second by their face. The shop could do with knowing, month by month, how much of its sales are of each kind.
What Rajasthan footwear dealers ask
A woman in another city cannot try the mojari. How does she pick a size from my online shop?
List each mojari with its sizes and rate. She picks the size she wears, and her order arrives on your phone. You check your count of that size before you pack.
A mojari is sold as a pair, not as two shoes. Do I count pairs or shoes?
Pairs. Set the unit of the item as a pair, so the bill and the stock both say pairs and the count never shows half a pair.
A household takes longer than it promised. Can I see how long its pairs take to come?
Yes, by the dates. The order goes to the household on one day and its pairs are noted against it on the day they arrive, so the two dates sit side by side for each lot.
The mojari makers of Jodhpur
Hand-embroidered mojaris are in high demand for wedding trousseaus, but the common man prefers much cheaper machine-made shoes, so the market is niche. A shop that sells both has two kinds of customer, and the embroidered pair is bought a few at a time, often for a wedding.
In Jodhpur's mojari trade, women of the household embroider the shoes while men cut, punch and stitch the leather, which is brought from Uttar Pradesh tanneries. A pair is the work of a whole household, so a shop that orders from such a house waits for it and wants to know when it will come.