Billing for your footwear shop in Tamil Nadu
The new pair, the repair and the pair on credit till Saturday, all noted on your phone.
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A repair turned into a sale, rubber and leather read apart and a pair on credit till wage day
A repair that ends as a sale
A man comes in for a strap. You bill the stitching under his name, open his page and find the size of the sandal you sold him last time. While the strap is stitched he is shown the same size in a new pair beside the stool.
Rubber and leather counted apart at night
Before Deepavali every member of the family wants a new pair, and the cheap slippers and the leather pairs do not sell alike. Decide which kind to stock deeper before the crowd comes, from what each kind did last Deepavali.
A pair on credit till Saturday's wage
A worker from the mill or the leather unit takes a pair today and pays on Saturday when the wages come. His page holds the pair with its date, and on Saturday he pays what is on it, and you do not rely on a face you half remember.
A cobbler's stool beside the shelf, a pair for every member of the family and two kinds of buyer in one shop
The cobbler's stool beside the new-pair shelf
A cobbler at the front stitches a strap, glues a sole or fits a new heel while the customer waits. The few rupees for each repair go into the same drawer as the money for new pairs. In Deepavali week families bring old pairs to be mended before buying new ones, and at night nobody can say what the stool earned that week, or how it compares with an ordinary week.
A new pair for each member of the family before Deepavali
At Deepavali a family comes in together and each person tries on a pair: the father a leather sandal, the mother a pair of slippers, the children two kinds of school shoe. The bill grows into a list of different sizes and colours, and a family that has stood at the counter for an hour wants the total quickly.
Two kinds of buyer, two kinds of price
The daily wage worker wants a rubber slipper at the lowest price, and the office-goer wants a leather pair that lasts. Both stand at the same counter, and a shop that tracks only the day's total does not see whether the rubber or the leather paid for the rent.
Tools for chappals, school shoes and the repair stool
Bills on your phone
One Deepavali bill for the whole family: the father's leather sandal, the mother's slippers, the children's school shoes, and a repair charge at the end.
Credit book (khata)
A page in the name of a regular who leaves his sandal for stitching and pays when he collects it, so the repair is not lost between visits.
Daily reports
The Deepavali days read pair by pair, so the sizes and colours that led the week stand at the top of the list for next year's cartons.
Many shops, one owner
The repair stool at the front kept as a counter of its own under your account, so its takings are never lost in the shelf's.
Your own online shop
A page of this Deepavali's models, so a family from a far village picks the model at home and makes the trip to town once.
Leather towns, mill towns and wedding towns of Tamil Nadu, and the feet in them
Footwear in Tamil Nadu follows the work of each district. A few facts about three of them.
- Vaniyambadi and Ambur, in the old Vellore district, are leather centres making finished leather, shoes and garments for export, and a shop near them sees workers who know the quality of a pair.
- Coimbatore has many textile mills, and the families of the mill workers fill its footwear shops on the first days after the wage.
- Kanchipuram silk sarees are worn as bridal and special-occasion wear across South India, and about 5,000 families made them in 2008. A wedding in such a family needs footwear for every guest.
Questions Tamil Nadu footwear shop owners ask about repairs, wage days and families
Do I need a separate page for the cobbler's earnings?
No. The cobbler's pay is between you and him, and the takings are on the phone.
Can I see how much the repair stool earned in a month?
Yes. If you keep the stool as a counter of its own, its bills are totalled apart, and you can look up any day's takings from it.
A mill worker's wage came late and he pays only half of Saturday's amount. Where does the rest wait? Where do I write that?
On his page. Note the half he paid on Saturday as a payment, and the other half stays open with the date, so the page shows what is still due when his wage comes.
After the Deepavali bill is made, a child's pair is too small. How do I show the family bringing it back for a size up?
The family's bill has a line for each pair, so only the child's line is touched. Make a new bill for the larger pair at the counter, and the other pairs on the first bill stay as they were. The family's page keeps both bills with their days, so nothing is left to memory or to a quarrel.
Where Tamil Nadu's footwear is made
The state's investment agency says the Ranipet-Ambur-Vaniyambadi cluster has long been an established centre for leather footwear production in Tamil Nadu. A shop in the state sells pairs that were made a few hours' drive away, and the maker is often a name its customers know.
In August 2022 the Chief Minister laid the foundation stone for a Rs 400 crore mega footwear manufacturing park at Panapakkam, Ranipet. A shop in the state buys from a trade that is still growing, and the lines on its shelf will change with it.