THE STATIONERY MARKET

"In modern stationery shops, actual stationery goods are relegated to one corner, while products like music cassettes and CD's are highlighted. There is no other shop like ours; only for stationery goods."

V Sethuraman, of Perumall Chetty and Sons, has justifiable reasons to be proud of his concern. Perumall Chetty and Sons was founded in 1840 by Perumall Chetty who came from a small village called Vipputtur, near Nellore in Andhra Pradesh. V Sethuraman, who is one of the partners and the grandson of Perumall Chetty, is managing the enterprise today.

Chennaibest.com speaks to him on the stationery market in Chennai.

August to September the sales are high for notebooks and other stationery connected with schools, because that is when the schools and colleges re-open for the year. March-end and April, Accounts books are in demand because of the financial year closing. And then, August to September is when cards for Christmas and New Year are sold.

Yes, there are quality norms for this industry. ISI standards set by the Central government. But these are rarely followed by unscrupulous and unethical dealers, who do not follow the rules.

I see only Computers in the future. Anything to do with Computers is going to do well.

The market is quite big and generates a lot of employment, but unfortunately shops supplying books and other stationery material have sprouted all over like teashops. So one cannot actually give even a rough estimate. Most of the trade is in the unorganized sector, with scores of people operating from their homes.

Now the biggest players in this market are the Olympics traders. They do only cards. They specialise. That has become the latest fad.

Brand name and Quality. In the case of new products, customers prefer to go by the brand which is top-of-the-mind. The brand awareness is of course, achieved through advertising. For example, in inks Quink, Bril and Camel inks are there. But everybody wants Quink. Likewise, even in paintbrushes, people go by the brand. A far as the quality is concerned, the customer is pretty well informed. Like some artists prefer to use only a few kind of brushes and when they come to the showroom they ask specifically for that kind of quality.

In this market, to have an establishment like us, it is not as profitable as it used to be. Earlier, big companies used to approach and go through us only. Now, somebody sitting in his house (he would have just been registered) will go collect orders from various offices, buy the stock from people like us and supply. He will have no stocks and he will save on maintenance and other establishment costs. He doesn't have to invest in manpower or pay electricity bills and so on. All this adds to his margin. We know this because the people who do this come to us and say that they are doing business and so they want a discount. When we ask them where they do business, they say that they do it from their homes. There are no overheads, because there is no office, no godown, no stocks and no manpower. He just gets the order, procures the stock from us and supplies.

Engineering College Students buy the mini-drafts and material connected with their studies. School of Arts students buy artist's material, paper, paints and brushes.

I could boast of many Ministers who, in my early days, used to come here and buy things on New Year day. Even though they were Ministers, they used to come and buy some small things just for the sake of visiting the showroom, to meet all of us. They came just for the sake of nostalgia. C P Ramaswamy Aiyer's son Pattabhiram, who was a Central Government Minister, was also one of the Ministers who visited my showroom. He used to come, just pick up a dairy or two, spend a little time with all of us and go. They need not have come; they could have just rung up or sent somebody to get the things for them. Swami Chinmayananda visited our showroom over here and he was also there for the inauguration of our showroom on Mount Road in the Life Insurance Corporation Building.

The market is getting newer and newer everyday. The future is in computers. Technology is so fast that we cannot keep pace with it. What was here yesterday is outdated today. For example (pointing to a row of shelves) the paper over there is meant for telex. All the big newspapers and companies used to have telex. But now nobody is using it. We are not able to sell these things for the past four years even though we have been offering heavy discounts. In those days, big hotels and all newspaper offices had stands which had the latest news being printed on rolls of paper. That paper is the rolls that I was talking about. There used to be newsboy who used to tear the sheet having the latest news and display it for the guests, on a board. But now all that one needs now is the computer and the internet and one can send information anywhere at the click of a mouse.

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