Building your own catalogue when a buying house has always sold for you

The buying house has sold your goods for twenty years. Its merchandiser knows your capacity and its showroom holds your samples. You have never had to explain your own range, so you have no catalogue, no price list and no way to take an order without them. Build all three, even if the house stays. First sort out which pieces are yours to show. Photograph those, write a specification for each, and set up an order route with codes, MOQs and a named contact. Then agree, in writing, which buyers stay with the house.

Why the unit has no catalogue of its own

In some Uttar Pradesh workshops, such as leather units in Kanpur or carpet looms in Bhadohi, an agent or buying house holds the buyer relationship. The house did the costing, the photographs, the sample dispatch and the English emails. The unit did the making, and did it well.

That arrangement works until a buyer looks for you directly. A sourcing manager who met you at the IHGF Delhi Fair, or a riding school in Pune that heard your name, searches and finds nothing. The order goes to whoever has a catalogue, sometimes the buying house itself, which then sources the piece from you at its own price.

What you may show, and what belongs to the buyer

This is the step owners skip, and it causes the worst trouble. Before anything is photographed, sort the range into three piles.

• Your own designs, developed in your unit and sold unbranded to more than one buyer. These go in the catalogue.
• Standard pieces that every unit in your trade makes, such as a plain snaffle bridle. These go in, photographed in your own work.
• Anything made to a buyer's pattern, with their logo, their hardware or a design their team sent you. These stay out, unless that buyer has agreed in writing.

If you are not sure which pile a piece belongs in, it belongs in the third. A buyer who finds their design in your catalogue may not order from you again, and the buying house will hear about it.

You can still show what you are capable of. Add one page called "made to your pattern" that lists the materials, processes and fittings you work with, without showing anyone else's product.

Photographs, and the sheet behind each one

Shoot the whole first pile, not the best five pieces; a buyer judging a range wants to see the range. Each piece needs three photographs: the full product on a plain background, a close-up of the stitching or finish, and one beside a ruler.

Then write a sheet for each product. It is the part the buying house always did for you, and the part a direct buyer reads twice.

• Product code, the same in the catalogue, the price list and the invoice
• Materials, named properly: leather type and tannage, hardware metal, thread
• Sizes, in the units the buyer uses, and colours available
• Weight, and how it is packed: pieces per carton, carton size
• MOQ per design and per colour
• Production time for an order of the MOQ, as you actually run it
• What can be changed: colour, length, hardware, a buyer's own label

A catalogue built to this standard is what a sourcing manager can forward to colleagues without ringing you first. The Panipat furnishings post shows how the same sheet works for textiles, with swatches.

A way to take an order without the house

A catalogue with no order route behind it produces enquiries that die. You need a price list on a stated basis, ex-works for Indian buyers and FOB for exporters, with a validity date. You need a proforma invoice template and your payment terms, written once. And you need a sample policy: what a sample costs, and whether it is adjusted against the first order.

Then name the person who answers. Someone in the unit has to read and write English emails, reply on WhatsApp, and know the codes. For Indian buyers, a listing on a B2B marketplace with the same codes and photographs gives them somewhere to find you.

For example: a Kanpur saddlery unit and the catalogue that showed a client's design

Imagine a Kanpur unit making leather saddlery and horse tack, selling for two decades through a buying house in Delhi. The details are illustrative. A younger member of the owner's family wants direct orders, and photographs everything in the godown and puts a PDF catalogue on the new website and on IndiaMART.

Among the pieces are bridles made to a German buyer's pattern, with the buyer's own brass name plates. The buying house's merchandiser sees the catalogue within the week. The house is angry, and the German buyer's design is now public.

The unit pulls the catalogue the same day. It sorts the range into the three piles and re-shoots only its own designs and the standard pieces. It adds the "made to your pattern" page. Then the owner goes to Delhi and agrees with the house that the unit will not approach the house's buyers. It will sell direct to riding schools and small tack shops in India, and to overseas buyers below the house's MOQ. The house stays. The first direct orders are small, and they are the unit's own. The re-shoot cost a second photographer's day, and the Delhi trip cost a week of the owner's time.

Keeping the buying house while you build this

A unit that ships volume through a house should usually keep it. The house carries volume, credit risk and the relationships with large buyers that a small team cannot replace quickly. The catalogue is not a plan to leave. It is a plan to stop being invisible.

Two rules keep the peace. Never quote one of the house's buyers below the house's price, because the buyer may tell the house and trust both of you less. And say what you are doing before a buyer does. Write down which buyers and markets go direct and which stay with the house before the first direct enquiry arrives; route-to-market and distribution strategy covers that choice.

Skip all of this if the house takes your full capacity at a price you are happy with and you have no wish to grow.

Sort the godown before you hire a photographer

Walk the godown with a notebook and sort ten products into the three piles. Then write the sheet for one product from the first pile and time yourself. Multiply by the size of the pile and you know how big the job is. If the catalogue, the price list and the order route need to be built as one piece of work, tell us what you need.