NELLORE/TIRUPATI: Despite a rise in the sale of handloom products on e-commerce platforms, weavers are hesitant to join the online bandwagon. They still prefer to sell their products offline directly to traders.
Besides concerns over return and exchange policies, another reason that has been keeping weavers from jumping on to the e-commerce bandwagon is their desire to maintain healthy relations with the traders, which many weavers felt was a prerequisite for keeping the business afloat. Weavers and traders share an age-old relation, in which the latter make advance payment to weavers so they can buy the raw materials required to meet the demand.
“We have been maintaining transactions with traders for decades and weave products according to orders. If we start conducting online business, it might hamper our relationship with the traders, who give us cash in advance to buy raw materials,” said K Subrahmanyam, a weaver from Venkatagiri rural.
The situation is similar in Patur, another cluster of handloom weavers in Nellore district, as almost every household is involved in the trade. Many weavers have set up shops at their homes, where they sell sarees at reasonable prices. Traders, too, visit their stores and make bulk purchases.