No, I am not into cross dressing (unfortunately ;-). I am here at this ungodly hour to point you to a recent Economic Times profile of the famous store in Chennai, almost synonymous with silk sarees: Nalli. The story covers, very briefly, the founding family and its managing style. Along the way you get some factoids. For example, would you have guessed Nalli's New Delhi store does more business than its Mumbai store? Did you know that there are Nalli stores in Singapore, San Jose, London and Toronto?
Here are links to the Nalli business group, and the Nalli Silks online shop.
Here is an interesting blogpost by Ramnath on their recent advertising slogan "no discounts since 1928".
How convenient, what you do not read about is how they make their money. In an investigative report in 2001/2002, Nalli silks was caught red-handed buying material from people who enslaved children, some aged 10. These children were basically used to pay for debts incurred by their parents.
ReplyDeleteThese kids were hit by adults and most often they had to work in horrible conditions with silk cocoons in boiling liquids without any protection of any kind.
So, the next time you buy a Nalli or any of those silk chains, please remember, the silk yarn was drawn by kids 10 and under who were kept as slaves in the villages of Tamilnadu.
This guy doesnt know the fact and has been strogly influenced by media sensational reports about child labour in the silk industry. May be a tour to silk manufacturing in India could reveal the actual facts so that he doesnt indulge in such accusations.
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