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What went wrongA toy maker in Kholash village, Dupchanchia, Bogura, in a Prothom Alo report

Fairs cancelled: 90,000 taka of toys spoiled, and another 60,000 left unsold

Three months of fairs from Chaitra to Jyaistha are this wooden-toy trade's entire market. One year 90,000 taka of toys spoiled in store; the next season's 60,000 taka of borrowed stock went unsold too.

Kholash village in Dupchanchia, Bogura, has made wooden and handmade toys - tomtom carts, tortori, ghinni, violins and wooden cars - for about sixty years, selling them at fairs across the country in the three-month Chaitra to Jyaistha season. This maker had been supplying fairs in Cumilla, Sylhet and Chattogram for 22 years. When Covid closed the fairs, 90,000 taka of his toys spoiled in storage. Hoping to recover, he borrowed again and built 60,000 taka of stock for the next season, only for the Baishakhi fairs and festivals to be cancelled as well, putting that capital at risk too. Village-wide, about 250 workshops were left holding roughly 2 crore taka of unsold toys; one maker had burned the previous year's unsold 40,000 taka of carts as cooking fuel, and an elderly maker of sixty years' standing put his own loss at at least 1 crore taka.

Lessons

  1. 1.When the whole year sells at three months of fairs, a cancelled season leaves no other market at all
  2. 2.Borrowing to rebuild stock before demand is confirmed turns one bad year into two years of debt

Published with the person's permission, without revealing who they are.

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