Navratri and Dussehra: nine nights of footfall, and what to do with it

2 min read · Updated 13 Sep 2026

Navratri does not sell stationery directly. What it does is put an enormous number of people on the street near your shop for nine evenings — which is a different opportunity.

Be honest about this one: nobody buys a pencil box because it is Navratri. If your shop is anywhere

near a garba ground or a market street, though, the nine nights change your footfall completely — and

footfall is the scarce thing, not stock.

Treat it as an exposure season, not a selling season

For nine evenings, people who have never walked past your shop walk past your shop. Two things follow:

  • Stay open later than usual on the evenings your street is busy. The margin on the extra hours is

usually worth more than the electricity.

  • Make the window work at night. The bright, colourful part of your range — glitter markers, LED

and character pens, gift sets — reads from a distance under lights. Plain stock does not.

What genuinely sells during the nine days

Small, bright, impulse-priced items bought by children who are out with their families and have some

money in hand. Novelty erasers, character pens, sharpeners. Keep them at the front and priced clearly.

Dussehra itself brings a second, quieter wave: it is considered auspicious to begin something new, and

for a lot of families that means a new book, a new pen, or a first writing set for a young child. It

is a small tradition and it is worth having tidy, giftable stock ready for it.

The bigger reason to prepare now

Navratri is the start of the festive quarter, not the end of it. Diwali follows within a month, and

Diwali is a stationery gifting occasion — for staff gifts, for children, and for the boxes and sets

that get given across a family. Whatever you learn about which designs draw people in during Navratri

is exactly what you should order deeply for Diwali.

Order your Diwali stock during Navratri, not after it. By the last week of October every

wholesaler in the state is short of the same three set designs.

A practical checklist

  1. Decide your late-opening evenings now and tell your staff.
  2. Bring the brightest stock to the front and the window.
  3. Keep small impulse items at the counter, priced and visible.
  4. Watch what draws people in — and place the Diwali order that week.

Our range is in the catalogue; stationery sets and

markers and highlighters are the two to look at first for a bright window.