Billing for your beauty parlour and cosmetic shop in Sikkim
Forty small services a day, each worth a few rupees, and the drum of hair oil that fills the small bottles.
MG Marg's cafes and craft stalls, where your clients walk before and after the chair
Your clients walk around the town before and after the chair, and on a festival evening the busy streets tell you when they are about to arrive, a little late and all at once.
- MG Marg in Gangtok is a one-kilometre vehicle-free shopping street, popular for Sikkimese handicrafts, prayer wheels and flags, with food stalls and cafes.
_at_a_wedding_in_India_02.jpg){kind=link}
Each small service one tap, the oil drum counted down by the bottle, and a day of small sales read at closing
Each small service one tap, however many in an hour
Make each service an item with its own rate. On the eve of Losar, when women come for threading, a facial pack and a trim together, the helper picks the three at the chair and one bill is made in seconds, each line at its own rate. At closing the count of each service is a figure on the phone, and the box and the bills can be set side by side.
The lip balm and cold cream counted before the dry weeks
Visitors from the plains arrive unready for the dry cold and ask for lip balm and cold cream at the door. The first dry week is when they come asking, so keep the low line for that week higher than for the weeks after, and the warning comes while there is still a jar at the back.
A day of small sales read at closing
Because each service and each product is an item, the daily report shows how many threadings, haircuts and tubs of cream went out in the day. In the cold weeks the short threadings, a few at a time, are what pay for the lamp, and the report shows how many.
.jpg){kind=link}
Forty small services a day, cold air and cracked lips, and a drum of oil poured into bottles
Forty small services a day, each worth a few rupees
Threading, a fringe trim, a child's haircut, a facial pack: most of what a parlour sells is small, and the sales come one after another all day. Each is a few rupees. The helper takes the coins and drops them in the box, and at closing the box and the memory of the day are two numbers that rarely agree. The one who takes the money is rarely the one who did the threading, so even a good memory has only half the day.
Small tubs counted by eye, a dozen gone before the month is half over
Lip balm, cold cream and moisturiser come in small tubs, each with its own rate and size, and the owner counts them by eye. A dozen go in one morning and none the next day, and the stock meant for the month goes in three weeks. A regular who asks for the same cream a week later finds it sold out, and the shelf did not say so.
A drum of hair oil poured into small bottles
In the cold months the hair oil in the drum thickens and runs slowly into the funnel, and the last of the drum will not pour at all. A customer waits in her shawl for her two bottles of a hundred millilitres, and the pour is hurried. By the end of the drum, what is left is oil you cannot sell.
Tools for a parlour chair and a counter of creams, oils and soaps
Low stock warnings
A line for hair oil, lip balm and cold cream that warns you before the dry months and before the drum runs out.
Your own online shop
A page of your services and their rates, with the lip balm and cold cream you hold for the dry weeks, that a woman reads on WhatsApp before she walks up from MG Marg.
Daily reports
What sold today at a glance, and any earlier day on request, so a slack hour and a busy one can be told apart. The small services show as many short lines, and the long ones as a few.
Questions Sikkim beauty parlours and cosmetic shops ask
I want a different threading rate for the cold weeks. Can I keep both?
Yes. Make the cold-weeks threading an item of its own, with its own rate, and keep the ordinary threading as it is. In the cold weeks you bill the first, and the report shows how many of each went, so you can see whether the second rate was worth keeping.
The oil thickens in the cold and the last of the drum will not pour. How do I write it off?
Reduce the drum's stock by the unpourable remainder once. The next drum then starts from a clean count, and the shortage is not blamed on the helpers. A bill for the bottle you really poured stays at the millilitres you measured.
A client asked last winter for a lip balm I did not hold. Where do I keep her ask until the dry weeks?
Make the lip balm an item with no count yet. When the dry weeks come it is already on your list, ready to order, with the name she asked for.
Herbal soaps and a cooperative salon in Sikkim
The Takshe Herbs self-help group, started in Sikkim in January 2023, makes herbal soaps and other natural products that its women members sell.
Tareythang Multi-Purpose Cooperative Society in Pakyong launched a beauty salon, described as the first by a cooperative in Sikkim, to serve local women.