Take a moment and appreciate the work of artisans involved in the end to end process of weaving a beautiful (handwoven) Pashmina Shawl.
It can take up to a year to complete the end-to-end process of manufacturing a handwoven embroidered Pashmina Shawl. Activities ranging from dehairing (clean-up) the raw pashmina wool, spinning yarn, weaving, and embellishing the Shawl with breath-taking embroidery (hand stitching with an exquisite design).
Let's think about the other side of the story – If I’m not wrong in assuming the demand dynamics of handwoven Pashmina Shawl insinuating at a gradual decline in the sales. Therefore, business houses may curtail their spending/ investment in this antique stuff, leading to low wages to artisans and least incentive (motivation) for someone new to learn the art. Why would an artisan prefer this as a career? Or why would his next generation indulge in this trade?
Erosion in the number of skilled craftsmen can result in the existential crises via-à-vis handwoven shawl industry. Cultivating and nurturing the skill, expertise of hand weaving/ stitching should be the priority of every business house.
While I've seen a great deal of people involved in selling (trading) of shawls, I’m skeptical about the magnitude of manufacturing, and I’m talking about the handwoven stuff not the machine driven manufacturing.
Unequivocally businesses are becoming more and more competitive. However, handwoven shawls warrant a competition based on product differentiation strategy as opposed to cost leadership.
