Your rate list is a laminated sheet taped to the wall beside the mirror. Shirt so much. Pant so much. Blouse so much, lining extra. It has hung there for years, the tape has gone yellow, and customers still lean in, squint at it, and then ask you the price anyway.
That sheet is doing real work. The problem is where it lives. Only a person already standing inside your shop can read it, and getting a person inside your shop is the hard part.
Three things wrong with a rate list on a wall
- 1. It cannot travel. A happy customer cannot show her sister your prices without dragging her sister to the shop.
- 2. It cannot change cheaply. Updating one rate means printing the whole sheet again, so old prices stay up months longer than they should.
- 3. It cannot answer at nine at night, which is exactly when people decide where to give their cloth.
A digital visiting card is the same rate list on a link. You send the link on WhatsApp, or you print its QR code and stick it next to the old sheet. Both versions can live side by side for as long as you like.
Set the list up the way stitching actually gets priced
Tailoring prices are not one flat number. An alteration is not the same shape of job as a bridal blouse. In Ahoyy each service carries its own kind of price, so the list reads honestly.
| Fixed price | Shirt stitching, pant stitching, a simple blouse. The rates already on your wall. |
|---|---|
| Starting at | Lehenga or heavy blouse work, where the money depends on the design. |
| Per hour | Rare in tailoring, but useful for fittings you charge for. |
| Price on ask | Bridal and designer work you want to quote after seeing the cloth. |
| Free | Small alterations you do free for regular customers, which is worth saying out loud. |
Writing free next to minor alteration is not a giveaway. It is often the line that makes a first time customer choose you over the shop two lanes down.
The delivery date conversation, handled once
Every tailor knows the loop. Cloth comes in. You say Thursday. On Wednesday the customer calls to check. On Thursday she calls again from outside the shop. Each of those calls stops a machine that was running.
The fix is not some clever automation. The fix is that she already has your link saved, with your shop timings and a WhatsApp button on it, so the check-in becomes one message instead of three calls. She taps WhatsApp on your page, you reply ready or not ready with one hand, and the machine keeps running.
You are not trying to stop customers asking. You are trying to make asking cost you eight seconds instead of a stopped machine.
Photos sell stitching. A price sheet does not.
Nobody picks a tailor from a number. They pick from a finished sleeve, a neat collar, a blouse back that sat right. Paper cards have no room for any of that. A card page does.
- • Put four or five of your best finished pieces on the page, shot against a plain wall in daylight.
- • Show the garment and not the face, if your customers would rather not be photographed.
- • Refresh them at festival time, when people are deciding where to give their Diwali and wedding stitching.
- • Keep one photo of the shop front, so a first time customer can find the right door.
This is where a link beats a wall permanently. The wall can hold a rate sheet. It cannot hold a portfolio.
Put your rates, your photos and your shop timings on one page that customers can forward.
Put your shop online freeA shop can move. Your link should not.
Rents change and shops shift a lane over. When that happens with paper cards, every card in every customer purse is now wrong. With a link you edit the address on the page, and every person who ever saved you sees the new one.
The same holds for a second number. Plenty of tailoring shops are run by two people, a cutter and a stitcher, or a husband and a wife. A card can carry more than one number, so the customer reaches whoever is free instead of whoever happens to be printed on the sheet.
Where to put the link, and what it costs
A card only works if people meet it. Put the link in five places and stop thinking about it.
- • Your WhatsApp about line. Free, and every customer you have ever messaged can read it.
- • A printed QR on the counter, at eye level where people stand while you take measurements.
- • The same QR on your bill book or your receipt slip.
- • Your Instagram bio, if you post finished pieces there.
- • A sticker on the shutter, so people walking past after closing can still reach you.
The shutter sticker is quietly the best one. Your shop is shut for more hours in a week than it is open.
Making the card, adding services with prices, adding photos and getting the QR code are all free. Ahoyy charges only for directory extras that a neighbourhood tailoring shop will never need. If you ever do, there is a ₹199 top up for 25 reveals and monthly plans at ₹299 and ₹799.
Here is the order to do it in. It is five short jobs, and none of them needs a computer.
- 1. Take a photo of the sheet on your wall. That is your first draft.
- 2. Type those same rates into the card as services, one line each.
- 3. Add four photos of finished work.
- 4. Add your timings and your weekly off, because a good share of your calls are people checking whether you are open.
- 5. Print the QR, stick it on the counter, and put the link in your WhatsApp about.
The old sheet can stay on the wall. It has earned its place. It just does not have to be the only copy any more.