One out of four retail clothes shops will shut down in Mumbai, feels trade body

Oldest retail clothes trader’s federation says due to lockdown fashion and ethnic wear shops will not survive

Mumbai: The Federation of Mumbai Retail Clothes Dealers Association (FMRCDA) fears that 80 days lock down will be death knell for one out of four retail cloth dealers. Nearly 90 percent of retail cloth dealers are operating from rented premises and due to lock down of 80 days they are affected so badly that shutting down shops will be the only option left for them. Especially ethnic wear dealers have lost business for a year now and fashion wear do not have future till Diwali. Impact of this will be job loss of close to one lakh people.

The FMRCDA is 75 year old trader’s federation and all the cloth dealers are its members. Federation secretary Shailesh Trivedi said that in cloth retail sector almost 90 % do business from rented premises. Rents in some areas of Mumbai runs into lakhs of rupees per month. During this 80 days lockdown period no owner is willing to give concession in rent and all owners want their 90 days rent, he added.

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“Other major thing is we have 90 days rolling period which means that all retail trader gets credit for 90 days. After 90 days payment is due on the credit. The lockdown started on March 24 so those suppliers whose 90 day credit was getting over on March 24 and those suppliers who supplied materials on March 23 will now come asking for money in next 10 days. Result is that three month rent, payment of all materials and on the top of that payment of salary for all the workers for three months would break traders back”, he said 

Trivedi further disclosed “In cloth section we have three branches one is Hosiery which includes under garments, T-shirt, track suit etc. These three months everybody has used the credit only and their sales will pick up afterward the lockdown is over. Second is the Fashion wear and third is Ethnic wear. Even fashion wear sales will pick up by Diwali as situation will improve, but Ethnic wear dealers will suffer the most as this wedding season went slack due to lockdown. There will be no business for these traders till December as all the functions are prohibited. Now look at the grave situation these traders are facing. Only those who can sustain for the whole year without business will survive”.

He also pointed out that looking at the present scenario Uttar Pradesh trades asked for sops from governments on rents and other things before opening up. Maharashtra should take a leaf from this and help retail cloth traders as 25% shops shut down means job loss of at least one lakh plus workers.