Sonia Sarees

Sonia Sarees has been operating out of Surat for quite a while now. This city is the heart of the textile world, and we are just one small part of it. Our shop is usually overflowing with rolls of fabric and finished sarees. We don’t have a fancy website or a huge marketing budget. Most people find us because they’ve been coming here for years or their mother told them about us. The shop floor is always covered in bits of thread and discarded plastic wraps. We spend a lot of time unfolding sarees for customers and then even more time folding them back up neatly so they don't get wrinkled. It’s a repetitive job, but there is something nice about the feel of the different fabrics. We have silk, cotton, and all sorts of synthetic blends. Sometimes we find a small defect in the weaving and we make sure to tell the customer before they buy it. We aren't here to trick anyone. Surat is a hot, crowded city and our shop can get quite stuffy when it’s full of people, but we keep the fans on high and just keep going. We buy our stock from various weavers we’ve known for a long time. It’s a simple business built on long-term relationships and a lot of manual labor. We don't have any big corporate plans; we just want to keep the doors open and the shelves full. We just want to make sure people walk out with something they actually like. It's a lot of work but it's what we know.