Sales of winter clothing, both new and used, have risen in Lalmonirhat and its neighbouring areas in the past few days, with the first stirrings of the coldest season of the year.
Various items of clothing – such as shawls, sweaters, headbands, caps, mufflers, fur-lined coats, cardigans, etc. – are being sold at makeshift clothing stores, roadside pushcarts and stalls, as well as in shopping malls. Buyers crowding these places are mostly of low-income backgrounds looking for low-cost warming gear.
Winter in this region means a drastic change in the way general people lead their lives and organise their schedules. Family and social programmes are timed to coincide with the coldest and warmest times of the day, but those living in the char areas are usually the group affected the worst and are the most helpless.
Since they cannot afford buying warm clothes most of the time, they have to depend on used clothes coming in through charity – when and if they come.
Those with low purchasing power have to depend on resalable clothes.
“I sold a number of second-hand warm clothes, which are higher in demand than new clothes,” Rajob Ali, owner of a clothing shop near the Mogholhat railway gate, said.
Those coming to his shop are usually people from low and fixed income groups, including day-labourers, rickshaw-pullers and such, he added.
Mozibur Rahman, a rickshaw-puller looking for warm clothes, who lives at the Kalmati village of Lalmonirhat sadar upazila, said, “We have been facing extreme cold these last few days, so I have come to buy some used clothes for my family.”
“However, the prices of clothes are much higher compared to the last year.”
Shamsul Haque, who sells second-hand items including denim jackets, woollen blazers and sweaters in his shop near the town’s Puran Bazar, claimed to have sold some of to well-off individuals as well. “Particularly, young well-off customers think that used items are better in quality and design than new items.”
Ramoni Kanto Barman, who resides at the Roypara area in the town, said he had bought two woollen sweaters for his children from a footpath shop near the railway station. “Their quality is very good. They even look fresh and almost new and are comfortable to wear,” he said.