Billing for your stationery and book shop in Sikkim
Postcards for the visitor, a bundle of newspapers at dawn, and school bags by size, all counted on your phone.
MG Marg's handicraft stalls, the lane where visitors buy diaries and pens
A book shop in a hill town shares its street with shops of other trades, and some of its best customers are visitors who walk in for a postcard.
- 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.
Tools for a counter of textbooks, copies, pens and geometry boxes
Credit book (khata)
A page for the taxi driver who takes a bundle of maps and postcards to sell to his passengers. Each bundle is a dated line, and what he owes is read from the page when he comes back.
Low stock warnings
A line for school bags by size and colour that warns you before the session starts. The same line works for water bottles and tiffin boxes.
Daily reports
Copies of each newspaper sold each day, set against the bundle that came, so the next day's order is made from the figures. After a month the figures show which paper sells fastest on which day.
Postcards and maps for visitors, forty newspapers at dawn, and school bags in six sizes
A postcard, a map and a small guide for the visitor
Visitors walk MG Marg slowly and step into the shop for a diary, a pen or a postcard, and they look for a long time before they buy something small. Each is a small thing with a small rate, and some come in two languages. The postcards sit in a box by the counter, and when the box is empty nobody knows how many were sold. A visitor who bought three of one kind and none of the other leaves you a gap that only shows when the next one asks.
Forty newspapers at dawn, thirty-six sold by noon
The newspaper bundle arrives before the shop opens, and the hawker counts out his share. Over the day the rest are sold, a few at a time, and some come back unsold. At closing, forty minus thirty-six is not four, because a copy walked off with a reader who said he would pay tomorrow. A paper sold on credit is the worst kind of sale, because it has no price high enough to be remembered.
School bags in six sizes and a dozen colours
When the new session begins, children come in with their parents for a bag, a water bottle and a tiffin box. Bags come in sizes and colours, bulky and few. A child likes the blue one, and the shelf has it only in the smaller size, and the next lot is a fortnight away. The parent decides on the spot, and a shop that cannot say which sizes it holds loses the bag and often the books that go with it.
Each postcard its own item, the newspaper bundle counted down by the copy, and a bag found by its size
Postcards and maps counted one by one, in each language
Make each card, map and guide an item with its own rate and count, one for each language. When the box of cards is nearly empty, the phone says so and you order before the next car stops outside.
The newspaper bundle counted down by the copy
Make the newspaper an item and note the bundle when it arrives. Each copy sold comes off the count, and a copy taken on credit goes on the reader's page. At closing the bundle, the sales and the credit add up. The same count shows which paper sells out first, so you ask the hawker for more of that one.
A bag found by its size and colour, before the session
Make each bag an item by its size and colour. In the weeks before the session you see which sizes are thin, and the order to the wholesaler goes out while the next lot can still come in time. A bag that sells only in the first weeks of the session shows as a flat line after, and the line comes down.
Questions Sikkim stationery and book shops ask
Visitors fill MG Marg in some weeks and the new session fills the shop in others. Which weeks do I read for which item?
Read the new session's first days for the copies, pens and bags, and the visitor weeks for the postcards and maps. Both lists sit in the same daily report, so you order each from its own weeks and not from the year's average.
Nepali, Hindi and English papers come in one bundle every morning. Does each need its own item?
Yes. Each paper has its own rate and its own readers, so each is an item. The count of the Nepali paper comes down by itself, and a reader who takes two papers has two lines on his bill.
Forty papers come at dawn and thirty-six are sold by noon. Where are the other four in my count?
The count started at forty and each sale took one off, so the phone shows four. Next morning you know to ask the paper agent for four fewer.
A child wants the blue bag only in the small size, and it is out. What do I tell the parent about the next lot?
The phone shows the small blue bag at nil, so you say so at once. When you send the order for the next lot, you note the day it was asked for, and you tell the parent that day.
A taxi driver takes a bundle of maps and may bring back the ones his passengers did not take. How do I note that?
Put the maps on his page with the day. What he brings back you count into the maps' stock again, and the page then shows only the maps he kept.
Free books, uniforms and the school year in Sikkim
In February 2025 Sikkim gave free textbooks and uniforms to 40,968 students of 767 government schools on the first day of the new session, the second year running that it gave free exercise copies too.
Sikkim's school year starts on 1 February from the 2019 session; the winter break was cut from two months to 33 days. Notebooks are ordered in January.