Recently http://www.amazon.in/ one of the leading online stores organized a workshop of handloom weavers at Sonepur. The workshop was organisied intending to enter into an agreement between the weavers and the online store to sale their products; mainly saree.
Before amazon many people are selling Sambalpuri, Sonepuri stuff online. The Meher brand by Padmasree Chaturbhja Meher sells their products online. The Bayanika, Odisha government’s official site also sells saree and other stuff online. Amazon is not doing a new job but its marketing capacity is calculated to be more than any others. It is expected that it will be wider than anyone. People sitting in any location over the globe can buy Sambalpuri, Sonepuri Saree. But challenges are many.
Read more about handloom of western Odisha https://odishawatch.in/handloom-of-western-odisha/
When someone buys a cloth from a store he/she usually touch it to feel the cloth. Again the buyer has the advantage of exact colour of the product before him/her. The disadvantage is, one cannot touch and feel the cloth. Again the image taken by a camera of any object varies a little from how it looks to the naked eye. So such compliant will definitely surface at the selling point. Again there are chances of duplicity of product and the buyer may not get what he/she ordered online.
But the big plus point is the weavers of the region will be benefited if the online store sells their products.