Good and Bad in India

 Greetings from Greater Noida, India

The AW buying team (Tomas, Bryant, Chatterjee, Drishanta, and me)  are travelling in India - seeking out a swath of amazing new products for you. Right now we are attending the huge Spring trade show at the exhibition center in Greater Noida.. To be honest, I'm not always impressed by the tradeshows, preferring to seek out the independent family businesses directly, but this year is different.. details below.
Last week I was telling you about our last days in Kathmandu - the journey to Delhi and then onwards to Panipat - a major textile area in North India. If you missed it you can read ti here.
Since then we have spent a few days in the heart of Old Delhi connecting with our regular suppliers and some new ones, then onward to the trade show.

Panipat was interesting, we stayed in Days Inn.. close to one of our suppliers. Probably one of the worst hotels ever. From the sullen un-smiling staff, to the super-slow and patchy Wi-Fi to the ripped wallpaper and stained bedsheets - it was all sub-par. It sold itself as a luxury wedding venue and indeed it had a vast wedding hall, where the staff played banging Bollywood music at all hours. The lobby was reasonably grand and the building not old, but somehow everything was shabby and dusty. When we checked out the manager came and asked me if everything was good.. I gave him my feedback as you can imagine.. after much apologising they went on to charge my credit card twice.. and until today despite many promises and daily phone calls not refunded the "mistaken" charge.  

India, as you know is a land of extremes. Extreme poverty/wealth, extreme squaller/beauty, extremely unkind people / amazingly good people.  If the hotel in Panipat was bad the opposite could be said about our supplier. The family business is run by Raj, the eldest son and an absolute gentleman, his father and younger son also gentle people, but absolute professionals of the textile business. We had placed one order with them semi-remotely. Last June I had met Chatterjee in Kuala Lumpa (at that time India was closed to British people) and he brought suit cases of samples from Panipat. And so from a hotel room in KL we had an online meeting with Raj in India with samples spread all over the floor and so managed to negotiate a deal and kicked of our business relationship.  We bought a range of the hugely popular Indian Rag Rugs.. which came in stock and sold out rapidly.. (actually more due in a week or so).  Also stocked are some round jute and recycled cotton rugs and some nice classic cotton rugs, which can function as yoga mats - excellent quality and value - you can compete with Ikea with these. And some posh tasteful cushion covers... 
So now it was time to meet the family.. and see what else Panipat has to offer. The city has a slightly wild-west frontier town to it.  Lots of what we call alcohol shops.. selling strangely "English Wine". I mentioned to Raj that English wine was quite hard to come by even in England.. turns out in these parts any imported drink is classed as "English".  Large textile factories dominate the industrial parks and the area has a cultural heritage in rug manufacturing and recycling.
Raj took us to there factory, sadly closed because of the Holi holiday, and showed us the impressive showroom.. a surprising amount of textile items come from this town.. probably quite a few items from here are in your home.
Raj and Tomas clearly had creative chemistry, within an afternoon we were putting together some exciting ranges.


    We had a tour of the workshops where some production was happening despite the Holi holidays.




After surviving Panipat.. we moved to central Delhi and spent four days in-depth visiting suppliers..
Now we are busy in the trade show.. and I think we have some amazing deals and products in the pipeline for you. Esoteric products, amazing new incense, notebooks, scarves.. it's all happening!! 
Full report next week..

It's Mother's Day this Sunday (in the UK).. so wishing all Mothers an absolutely lovely day..
Take care.

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