Associated Bearing Corporation

Our shop is at No. 167 on Thambu Chetty Street. If you know this part of Chennai, you know it is crowded and the streets are narrow. We have been here for a long time. We deal with bearings of all types. The shelves are packed from floor to ceiling with boxes. It is a bit dark inside because the building is old, but we have good lights over the counters. We spend most of our day looking up part numbers and climbing ladders to find the right box. It is a lot of walking back and forth. We do not have any air conditioning, just a couple of old ceiling fans that buzz. You get used to the heat after a while. People come to us when they cannot find a specific bearing anywhere else. We have a lot of old stock that is hard to find now. It is a family-run thing. My uncle usually sits at the front desk. We do not use computers for everything; a lot of our records are still in big paper ledgers. It works for us. The street outside is always noisy with carts and bikes. Sometimes it is hard to hear the customers. We do not do any big marketing. We just open the shutters in the morning and wait for people to come in. It is a simple life. We close up at the same time every evening and head home.