Tailoring AppFestive and wedding season checklist for tailoring shops
For most tailoring shops in India, a handful of weeks around Diwali and the wedding season bring in a large share of the year's work. They also bring most of the year's complaints: late blouses, missed trials, a sherwani that is not ready on the morning of the wedding.
This checklist is for the weeks before and during the rush.
Before the rush
Work out how much you can actually make. Count your karigars and how many pieces of each kind they finish in a normal week. A blouse, a kurta and a lehenga are not the same amount of work. This number is your limit per week, and the rest of the plan depends on it.
Set your last booking date. Work backwards from Diwali or each big wedding date: delivery date, minus the trial and alteration time, minus the making time. Tell customers the last date you can take orders for that day, and put it on a sign at the counter.
Call your regular customers early. Regular customers who order a month ahead spread the work out. A short call or message in the first week of the season fills your calendar with work you can actually finish.
Get the materials in. Lining, hooks, buttons, zips, thread in the common colours, interfacing. Running out of a ₹10 item can hold up a ₹5,000 order.
Fix your measurement records. Make sure every regular customer's measurements are findable by name or phone number, with the date they were taken. Ask returning customers if anything has changed before you reuse old numbers.
When taking orders
Write the trial date and the delivery date on every order. Not "before Diwali". A real date.
Leave room between trial and delivery. Most alterations are small, but in the rush even small ones wait in a queue. Two or three days between trial and delivery saves late nights.
Write down everything the customer says. Neck design, lining, padding, sleeve length, a photo of the design they showed you. In the rush, nobody will remember who asked for what.
Take the advance. It confirms the order and protects you if the customer does not come back.
Say no when the week is full. A declined order costs you one sale. A late order for a wedding can cost you the customer and everyone they tell.
During the rush
Check two lists every morning:
- Work that has not been given to any karigar yet.
- Trials and deliveries due in the next two days.
Give work out by date, not by arrival. The order with the nearest trial goes first.
Move people to where the work is stuck. If finishing is piling up, move someone from cutting for a day, or bring in a helper for hooks, hemming and buttons.
Keep customers informed. A short message when the garment is ready for trial saves you many calls asking "is it ready?"
Keep the counter clear. Finished garments go into a ready section with the order number on them, so pickups are quick when the shop is full.
After the rush
Look back while it is fresh:
- How many orders did you take, and how many were late?
- Which garments took longer than you planned?
- Which week was overbooked?
Write the answers down. They are next season's plan.
Using an app for the rush
A paper register works until the busiest weeks of the year, which is exactly when it breaks. Tailoring App keeps orders, measurements and karigar work on one board:
- Every order has its trial and delivery dates, and the dashboard shows what is due or late.
- You see which jobs are not yet given to anyone, and where every job is: cutting, stitching, finishing or ready.
- Customer measurements are saved with the date and photos, and are found by name or phone number.
- Karigars see their own jobs on their phone, without the customer's details.
- The phone app keeps saving orders and measurements when the network drops, so a weak signal does not stop the counter.
It is free for one person and 50 orders a month, and ₹499 a month for the whole shop.