Shopkeeper Diarist 07 (unlike 03 and 05) has made a long-term success of his small village shop. We shall look at why on this page, but you can find more detail by clicking on the thumbnail here to see a description of his household dating from 2021.
He has for many years run a small general store in a riverside suburb of Kapasia, over the river from Hrishipara. He heads a three-generation household consisting of his mother, his wife and his son and daughter. They own their homestead plot and he put up a simple shed on the unmade-up roadside for his shop. There is also a cowshed where they raise cows for sale for the Eid sacrifice (they are Muslims, though the area is mixed Muslim and Hindu), and they raise some poultry: his mother looks after these livestock. There are no other major assets.
He sits in his shop most of the day every day, occasionally relieved by his mother or one of the children. There are no employees. He buys stock daily, using the income from the previous day's sales whenever possible. He gives shop-credit, in modest amounts, to trustworthy customers, and gets most of it repaid: failure to manage shop-credit, or baki, is a common cause of shop failures in Bangladesh. He takes credit from his wholesalers in somewhat larger amounts.
Though (like his wife) he is literate he does not keep accounts for his shop (other than a notebook for recording baki sales), and has admitted to being surprised sometimes at how much wholesaler credit he has taken. But because he tries to settle customer and wholesaler credit as quickly as possible, often daily, he has kept this aspect of his business under control.
He moderates their household spending if sales are poor, and on this basis has kept the shop running smoothly, even weathering the Covid lockdown well. As Chart 1 shows, there have been very few months of exceptional income or exceptional spending. They get an income boost each year when they sell the cow they have raised for sacrifice. In 2022 he bought his brother's share of the home, mainly to help his brother finance a separate home. In early 2023 he rebuilt their bathroom. The children are in school.
His sales have risen gently over the years but recently have not kept up with inflation.
