Customized Chappals...

For all those who find it difficult to get chappals suiting their unique feet sizes, Mahabalipuram is the place where you will end up finding the comfort of customised chappals. My visit to Mahabalipuram  with my friend who is particular about everything, even the size of the chappal, made me get into this particular shop which was amusing enough for me.

Though I have seen these shops before I always used to wonder who will even think of a customised footwear, that too chappal. And my friend was an example for me that I was so wrong. I realised there are customers who think differently and are born with unimaginable needs. And these shop owners have completely understood this.

Anyways I got the best opportunity to have a conversation with the otherwise boring shop owner and understand his business. He started off with a dialogue “this is the first shop which started selling chappals in this place”. And similar dialogues I have heard from many of the shop owners in Mahabs. He was happy to get a person to whom he can talk to. Understandably it’s the off-season in Mahabs and he is not having much company around. Of course you can’t expect tourists to come to a place which crosses 40 degrees at this time of the year. Apart from some foreigners who can afford to get tanned. The season starts after October and peaks in December- January, maybe because the season in Pondichery too is December, the Christmas and New Year.

The main customers for him are foreigners. According to him they are ready to try new styles and new things whereas the Indians prefer to go with what they are sure about. Also the foreigners are having more purchase power. Apart from foreigners even the people who are coming from Chennai for the one day outing also come here. He has a limited variety of chappals though he has different colours for each variety. And you have the option of mixing and matching the colours. The quality looked fine, though you can’t expect it to last for more than a month, if you use it regularly. He can make it for your size and he doesn’t take more than 30 minutes for the same. He asked for 250 Rs for a pair initially, maybe from the frustration of not able to sell much, and then started reducing the price.

But visibly his business is just doing good enough for him to survive. There are couple of reasons which I observed. One, he has to depend a lot on the sales during the tourist seasons, which barely stretches to three months. Rest of the months he is hardly making any money. And the second reason is that there are more than 20 such shops in such a small tourist place like Mahabs and a shop like this without any unique feature is clearly getting lost in the crowd. Even I will find it tough to recognise the same shop again as they all look alike. And when I quizzed him about the sales and what is affecting the business he left me dumbfounded. Forget the fact that he was answering me in English though I was trying my best to make him feel comfortable with my not-so-horrible Tamil. He just answered me with two words for the reason for bad business: “Economic Recession”.

Anyways I understood why his sales is low, though I could find many Indians getting into such shops, when my friend after trying at least couple of dozens of Chappals walked  off without caring to buy even one in the end. And I just managed to tell him bye in embarrassment and join the one who came for shopping.