A Street side Hawker's innovation

Streets in India, we get see and hear, hawkers, with all kinds of things for sale. They typically, keep “shouting “ about their wares and before long, some home maker or another will come out and buy one of those things, typically vegetables, fruits etc. Most of the hawkers even have a regular route and so are their customers as well. A bit of bargaining goes on, and every one is game for it. Some hawkers dont go out into the streets, but stay in a "market place" like a mandi !

But, recently, I was out on the streets on my morning jog,  when I was  surprised to hear  a hawker’s voice louder and clearer than what I normally hear and turned around to see where was it coming from?   There was only one hawker way down the road, and it was too far for the voice to be so loud and clear !

Curiosity got the better of me and I moved to wards the sound, and surprisingly the hawkers voice became louder and clearer and it was obvious that he was not even “shouting”. Imagine, what he had very smartly done ! Look at the picture ! He was selling raw mangoes..

Instead of having to shout all day long, he had invested in one of those Chinese loud speakers, that runs on batteries and recorded his whole “sales pitch “. Now all he had to do, was to put it “on”, and let it do the shouting, while he concentrated to pushing his cart around and selling.

I asked him how to got the idea and he said, he saw this in a “city market” and thought of it, that he would be able to reach out to more people  this way, as he could not constantly keep “shouting” his wares for every one in the hear !

So, quite a jugaad (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugaad ) of an idea. What do  you think? Do you know of any such retailing solutions.? In a country like ours, there are a number of ways to reach out and impact your customers. 

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Posted in: Consumer, Entrepreneur, Jugaad, physical retail, women