I want to write about a single sheet of paper. It is two-sided, A4, photocopied two thousand times so far, and folded into the back of dozens of saree pallus, into a wallet, into a notebook that travelled from Dehradun to Delhi and back. It is the most useful artefact our studio has made. It is also the one nobody asks us about.

What goes on the sheet.

Five rows. That is the whole rule. If you cannot say a cost in one of these five rows, you are talking about something else.

  1. Materials. Yarn, dye, finishing thread, edge trim. Per piece.
  2. Labour. Loom hours times the loom hour rate. Per piece. The rate is set quarterly, in a meeting. Not by us.
  3. Finishing. Hemming, ironing, knotting, washing, tagging.
  4. Logistics. The dyer's commute. The cluster's pickup. Diesel light in winter. Packaging.
  5. Share. The cooperative's margin, before retail markup. This is the row everyone wants to skip. Don't.
A finished costing sheet, week six, Sahaspur cohort. Photograph placeholder.

Why it has to fit on one page.

A two-page costing sheet is a confession. It says: I have not finished thinking about this. A one-page sheet is a contract. It says: this is what we agreed, and we agreed it together. Every multi-page costing template we have ever inherited from a partner agency has, within two months, lived inside a folder, and the folder has lived inside a cupboard, and the cupboard has been forgotten.

"

A two-page costing sheet is a confession. A one-page sheet is a contract.

The four mistakes we keep making.

  1. Translating too late. The Hindi side has to be the front, not the reverse. The front is what gets read.
  2. Pricing in someone else's currency. If retail is in USD, we still write the sheet in INR. The maker has to recognise the number she is signing under.
  3. Hiding the share. Every time the "share" row has been embarrassing to fill in, it is a sign the rest of the sheet is wrong.
  4. Filling it in for them. Hands off. The pen belongs to the weaver. We are a witness.
Side A — the Hindi version, signed in week two.
Side B — English reverse, for the retail conversation.

What changed when the sheet stayed.

The Sahaspur cooperative now meets every Tuesday. Twenty-three minutes, average. They look at three things: the most recent cost sheets, the most recent buyer feedback, and one number — the share. They are, I think, the only cluster of weavers in Uttarakhand who can, without warning, tell you their March margin in February.

That is the whole story. A piece of paper, folded into a pocket, walked home. Read, re-read, signed, signed again. It is not the kind of design output that wins awards. But it is the design output that, two years from now, will still be in use.

If you want the template

We are slowly cleaning up an open version for other clusters to fork. Write to us at hello@2323designs.in and we will send the latest draft, with notes.