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EID SALES

Busy hours for traders

Sohel Parvez
Clothes retailer Nur Hossain had little time to spare. He rushed to the counter, cleared the payment and moved to another shop to complete his planned purchases yesterday, around 15 days to the Eid.
“I can't talk to you now," he said while coming out of a showroom of Pakija Textiles at the county's one of the biggest clothing wholesale markets --Islampur in Old Dhaka.
Hossain, who came from northern district of Lalmonirhat to purchase clothes to meet Eid demand, bought 160 saris at Tk 39,000 from the Pakija stall, out of his planned 1,000 pieces.
Hossain is among those hundreds of retailers coming from across the country to buy various items mainly such clothes as punjabi, sari and three pieces from wholesale markets. For punjabi, they rush to Sharif Market at Sadarghat. For local textile-based saris, three pieces and other clothing items, they run hastily around big wholesale clothing stores at Islampur to buy at competi-tive prices. Markets at Sadarghat and Islampur meet demand of the middle-class people.
At the Gauchhia market, a portion of retailers was also seen piling up their stocks with Indian dresses, influenced by the wearing trend of Bollywood film and serial stars. Gauchhia mainly offers clothes and dresses to the upper and middle class people.
The rush of retailers to the wholesale markets has started since Shab-e-Barat on August 17, and it will continue for at least another week. The clothes are being sold to the retailers in cash and on credit.
All the preparations are
meant for the biggest religious festival of the country's Muslims -- Eid ul-Fitr that helps clothing wholesalers and retailers generate bulk of their total yearly income. Other segments of the economy, directly or indirectly linked with the festival, also get a boost in business ahead of Eid.
"We generate around 80 percent of our total yearly sales in times of Eid. We take preparation for this season during the rest of the year,” said Lutfar Rahman, owner of one of the biggest punjabi wholesalers LB Garments at Sharif Market that supplies punjabis across the country.
Rahman, about the other months of the year, said, “In other days, we have to sit idle. Our sales increase many folds during the month of Ramadan."
Market operators said the daily total sales of punjabi at the Sharif Market now run into
several crores of taka, up from aboutTk 10 lakh before.
Rahman, also the general secretary of Shop Owners Association of Sharif Market, was upbeat about the sales this season as two biggest religious festivals -- Eid and Durga Puja --will coincide.
"We may record higher sales this year. The only problem now is load shedding,” he said.
Not all the wholesalers are buoyant about higher sales. A number of them are reporting low sales this Eid compared to the previous year.
Salespersons at various stores, mainly non-branded ones, said they witness low demand this year due mainly to erosion of peoples' purchasing capacity and flood in the northern parts of the country. They also said the anticorruption crackdown has affected the sales of clothes for JakaL
“Except a few well-known wholesalers, most are facing
low pressure of buyers,” said a busy salesman at a showroom of Pakija Textiles at Islampur yesterday. "Our sales are fine. But sales of many others are not satisfactory."
He said some branded textile and fabric manufacturers are facing increased buying pressure from the retailers.
Abul Bashar, in-charge of a showroom of Jony Textiles, the manufacturer of various clothing items such as sari, three pieces and lungi, said sales at the showrooms of Jony have increased remarkably during Ramadan.
“I don't know about others’ sales but we are selling very high. Our daily sales have almost doubled now compared to the days couple of months ago,” he said, adding that the clothes the retailers are buying now will be sold until Eid shopping continues.
According to Bashar, the clothes at the Islampur whole-
sale market meet the Eid shopping demand of the lower and middle class people, living mainly in towns and suburban areas of the country'.
But the demand of middle class and upper class, living in big cities such as Dhaka is met mainly by boutiques and Indian clothes. The prices of Indian clothes are high compared with the prices offered in Islampur and Sadarghat wholesale markets.
At the Gauchhia market,, wholesalers of Indian clothes are posting increased sales. The prices of Indian clothes, mainly three pieces coming from Kolkata and Mumbai, range from Tk 2,000 to Tk 10,000 each.
“Our sales have increased compared with the previous year," said a salesman at Fashion Palace, a wholesale shop of Indian clothes.
sohel@thedailystar.net