Summer means a visit to tourist spots and summer resorts for a majority of the parents and their wards, taking advantage of the holidays for educational institutions. With schools and colleges set to reopen soon, parents and students are busy preparing themselves to get their wards ready to resume their academics.
All major business centres in the city are crowded with parents and their wards, shopping for back-to-school supplies, including new clothes, uniforms, school bags, shoes, stationery items, backpacks, lunch boxes, sports skits, musical instruments, apart from the books and notebooks.
Many schools arrange for supply of clothes for uniforms, books and notebooks and other stationery items on their premises.
Despite this, the textile shops are teeming with parents of schools which leave the choice of purchasing the uniform clothes to parents themselves.
Brisk business is reported in both the big and small textile showrooms situated on the Mainguard Gate, Nethaji Subhas Chandra Bose Road, Singarathope, and Big Bazar Street. Other than Deepavali, school re-opening period is only occasion when shops in these areas do roaring business.
All the shops have separate sections for selling the school uniform material. The season may stretch up to second week of June.
The textile shops have already stocked adequate varieties to cater for the needs of children going to various schools, says A.K. Hussain, proprietor of Ahmed Brothers in Singarathope.
Trade is brisk in the stationery shops and shoe marts. Apart from paying the annual school fees, the parents will have to spend another Rs. 5,000 on each child for these purchases for starting the school year.
The parents who have admitted their wards in new schools because of transfer, shifting of residence and so on are busy on the look out for the transport arrangements. The vans and autorickshaws taking students from particular areas are found in front of the schools during the admission days to canvass for students.
This has made the parents’ job easy.
The new academic year is one of the busy period for tailors.
Busy bees
The tailoring marts are wearing a busy look from the beginning of this month, with people making a beeline for the stitching of uniforms. The tailors are assured of a good revenue as the uniforms have to be positively stitched and parents cannot go for readymade dresses.
Tailors are working overtime to make the maximum out of the season. Many schools have introduced more patterns with uniforms of different colours for particular days and this has only increased the burden of tailors.
The tailoring marts are working overtime to make the maximum out of the season.
Some of the tailoring marts have stopped school uniform orders as they have to complete the orders already received in time before the reopening of schools.
The tailoring marts expect last minute rush, which gives lot of anxiety to both the parents and the tailors. This could be avoided if the parents place the orders in advance, as soon as the academic season comes to an end.
The school managements supply the uniform clothes only during the middle of the holidays and the tailors say that handing over cloth on the last working day of the academic year will put an end to the last minute rush.
“We used to receive uniform orders from mid April itself and we have almost stopped receiving the orders. We won’t be able to say no to our regular customers who approach us late and no doubt we have to struggle a lot.
We have already employed additional workers to meet the demand for this season,” says S. Vijayakumari running Ovia Arts at Karumandapam.
Almost all the tailoring marts have sewing machines fitted with electric motor which makes them work at a fast pace. But the prolonged load shedding is proving a big obstacle.
However, they try to meet the deadline and cater the customers’ demands. “It’s difficult, but we do our best to complete the order on date,” says N. Asghar Ali of Hero Tailoring Mart on Madurai Road. The Tangedco should ensure uninterrupted power supply to the tailoring marts during this holiday season, he adds.
The parents who have completed the shopping are happy that they can relax till the schools reopen.
“This time I was lucky enough to get readymade uniforms for both my school-going sons. I managed to purchase the football sport kits and the key boards for the music class at a single shopping.
However, I had to spend Rs. 5,000 on each son and it will definitely prove a burden for a middle class family like ours,” says K. Umamaheswari, a housewife of Kattur.
The parents take advantage of online shopping for purchasing electronic gadgets.
