Valued Business!

Stationery shops, Xerox machines, cafes and an Archies gallery is a frequent sight near colleges and schools. Although CCDs and Baristas are new in the locality, it’s the stationery shops that have been (in usual cases) ruling the scene for the past many years. Ruia College’s famous stationery shop, A 1 is right next to a Frankie and Chinese shop and bang opposite the parking lot, making it very conspicuous in its surroundings.

I’ve always been a big fan of all new pens in the market, the different colours/ shades of refills, the smell of new blank text books and a crazy collector of different types of diaries, I once wanted to own a stationery shop myself. However, after having spoken to the owner of A-1 Stationery, or ‘Uncle’ as everyone lovingly calls him, my ideas started getting slightly quashed.

Although Uncle started running the shop (which earlier also included tailoring jobs) after his father retired from the job and has been running it for the past 55 years, he now tells me about his plans to wrap up the business. One might think that a stationery shop would make huge profits, but one also has to remember that competition will always keep getting tougher and tougher. Adding to it, uncle says, employees need to be trustworthy, which is not the case as of this moment. “Earlier, the people who would work here would be part of the family itself, so we could trust each other. Also, we had such loyal and trustworthy customers that we never had even an iota of doubt in them. But cases of shoplifting are on the rise daily,” says uncle. Wondering how times changed, uncle tells me how there were so many instances when he left the shop to fetch something with only a customer in the shop to keep a watch.

We talk about my favourite topic- PENS and I ask uncle a question I’ve wanted to ask for years, as a child, how do YOU earn? “Well, there is a profit margin of say, 10-15% on the pens we sell. It is a good venture because, a pen is something that can’t EVER go out of fashion. They are always in demand. Even promotional activities by the company give us about additional 2% profits than usual. Sometimes the company tries to entice us by giving us ‘bonuses’ like goods worth Rs. 100 free on goods bought for Rs. 5,000, although this is nothing but a hoarding trick. They make us buy stock that we don’t need and hence block our own capital. They use these strategies more during the holiday season, when students have vacations as otherwise, sales drop steeply.”

As I chat with uncle, I notice that in the past few minutes, every second customer that has walked in has asked for a cell phone top up or recharge. According to uncle, who believes in moving with the times, it is the ‘mobile zamaana’ that each and every shopkeeper wants to tap in. According to him, keeping recharges and top ups helps increase footfalls and indirectly sales. “A stationery shop is a very attractive thing, you can never have enough of a pen or colours,” uncle says as I give a head nod and a smile in complete agreement. But on a more serious note, uncle claims that though it increases footfalls, the mobile business isn’t very profit making. On any top up the profit margin is 1.5 % on the amount of top up, which is hardly anything. Varying service providers give almost the same margins, though the maximum profit that can be achieved in this category is 2% which is still pretty low.

As Valentines Day approaches, I ask uncle how are the sales for greeting cards and uncle replies saying , “not much”. Uncle then asks me to see the cards for myself. As I start going through the open shelves I notice very few so called “romantic cards”. This is a complete contradiction to the cupid glass pieces, heart shaped pillows, golden paper wrapped chocolates and basically red colour everywhere. “Business is not everything, infact its nothing if it goes against our values. I know adding Valentines day cards would help my sales, but I don’t agree to the whole idea itself. I see students aged 15-16 coming and buying ‘I Love You’ cards, at an age where you don’t know love, commitment and what all it entails, it would be wrong on my part to cater to such an audience. Other than that, in these days of technology, sales of cards have decreased tremendously as its more convenient to send a text message or call or post on facebook wall, at least that way the other person knows for a fact that you remembered his birthday or whatever occasion."

Wrapping up my small little interview with him, Uncle added on to say, “ I’ve seen so many students come and go, and it gives me immense pleasure when ex-students drop in just to see how I am, how the business is taking shape, and it is then that I realise, that I might not be running a huge profit making business, but I affect many lives daily. And if I can do that with all my earnesty and values intact, I'm surely doing good business”.