Retailers keeping their fingers crossed about festival season sale

Textile traders in Tiruchi are anticipating a dip in business during the Deepavali season because of uncertain prospects of samba paddy season.

In addition to the large-scale textile showrooms, the city, which is said to be a hub of textile business, attracts traders from different parts of the country. Traders from Kolkata, Surat, Bengaluru, Hosur, and others set up shops to cash in on the Deepavali demand.

The textile showrooms in Tiruchi attract shoppers from different parts of Tiruchi, Ariyalur, Perambalur, and Pudukottai. There are shoppers from overseas, particularly Malaysia, Singapore, and Sri Lanka, who visit Tiruchi for Deepavali shopping.

Navarathiri season, particularly on the days of Ayudha Puja, and the weekend prior to Deepavali and the penultimate day of the festival are considered peak days of sales in a year. The shopping centres had been witnessing huge crowds in the last few days. However, according to traders, the business was not on the expected lines. They were of the view that the crowd was less than the previous year.

“Navarathiri season business has been dull. Many shoppers, who used to buy two dresses to four dresses usually, have restricted to just one this year. It could be due to the poor agricultural season,” says Mohamed Afzal, a textile trader on Big Bazaar Street.

Lack of employment for farmers due to uncertain paddy season in the wake of the fast depleting storage in the Mettur dam is said to have impacted the flow of money among the rural people, who depend on agriculture for their livelihood. While they lost employment opportunities at the fag end of the kuruvai season, the employment prospects had not been good in the samba season.

“Deepavali business is good whenever the agricultural activities are good. Many farmers in Tiruchi have no jobs during this year’s paddy season. It has severely affected our business. We will have to see whether the business picks up in the last two weeks prior to Deepavali,” says Nowshad, another trader.