Plastic Household Goods Distribution in Nepal: Space, Loads and Breakage

A truck full of buckets is worth a fraction of a truck full of cooking oil, but it is just as full. That is the plastic household goods trade in one sentence. Buckets, mugs, jugs, storage boxes, chairs, stools, dustbins and kitchen containers are on the shelf of almost every general and kitchenware shop in Nepal. For the distributor, margins are decided less by the price list and more by three practical things: how much godown space is wasted on slow items, how well each vehicle is loaded, and how many cracked pieces come back. This guide works through each of them.

Space: the hidden cost

Plastic goods do not expire, so it is tempting to keep everything. But styles and colours go out of fashion, and a stack of slow-moving chairs blocks the corner where fast buckets should be.

Sort the range into families

Family	Examples	How to manage
Fast movers	Buckets, mugs, jugs, basic containers	Never out of stock; reorder weekly
Seasonal	Large water drums and storage tanks before the dry months; festival and wedding items	Order ahead of the season, clear after
Furniture	Chairs, stools, tables	Big space users; keep tight quantities and push by route
Slow and specialty	Decor, unusual colours, niche kitchen items	Small quantities, order on request

Once a quarter, look at every family that has not moved. Decide: discount it, bundle it with a fast item on a scheme, or stop reordering. Free space is worth more than a slow shelf.

Look-alike SKUs

Three sizes of the same bucket in four colours are twelve SKUs that look almost identical in a dim godown. A fixed naming pattern prevents most counting mistakes: type, size, colour, always in that order, for example "Bucket 20 L Blue". Mark the size clearly on the rack, not just on the item.

Loads: plan the vehicle, not the order

Plastic orders are big in volume and small in value. A salesperson who books ten shop orders without thinking about the vehicle creates a loading puzzle for the godown the next morning.

A load sheet for one route (illustrative)

Stop	Shop	Cartons or pieces	Approx. weight	Notes
1	Kitchenware shop, main bazaar	18 cartons	160 kg	Wants delivery before 10 am
2	General store, bus park	12 cartons + 20 chairs	190 kg	Chairs loaded last
3	Hardware shop	8 cartons	70 kg	Payment due on delivery
4	Sub-distributor, next town	60 cartons	520 kg	First on, last off

Load in reverse order of the stops, so the first drop is at the back of the vehicle door. Light, bulky items such as chairs fill space long before the weight limit, so count cartons and pieces as well as kilograms.

Breakage: write the rule before the complaint

Thin plastic cracks in transit, in stacking and when a shop drops a carton. Every shop expects a replacement, and without a rule every complaint becomes a personal negotiation between the shopkeeper and the salesperson.

A simple damage rule

• Damage must be reported at delivery or within an agreed number of days.
• A photo is required.
• Replacement or credit note only after review, never as a cash refund on the spot.
• The reason is recorded: cracked in transit, manufacturing defect, damaged at the shop.

After a month, the reasons tell you where the problem is. If one route has most of the transit cracks, look at how that vehicle is loaded.

A route day in a bazaar town

Plastics routes follow markets. In a town, a salesperson can see many shops in a day; for district bazaars, trips are scheduled together with a delivery vehicle. A typical day might look like this:

• Morning. Start the day in the app. Visit the first cluster of shops. At each, note what the shop still holds before suggesting an order.
• Midday. Book orders, record reasons where a shop does not order, and photograph displays.
• Afternoon. Collect from shops whose bills are due, recording the payment method.
• Evening. End the day. The manager sees visits, flags and orders for the next morning's load.

The habit that matters most is checking the shop's stock first. A shop that still holds forty units of one bucket will not pay quickly for forty more.

How it runs in gamitrack

Catalog. SKUs by type, size and colour with weight in kg, grouped by category so families are easy to report. Orders show their total weight.

Godowns. The main godown and any depot are branches. Stock movements are append-only, so when someone asks why the count differs, the full history is there. Low-stock levels go on fast movers only.

Routes and visits. One route per market zone, with ordered stops. Visits are geofenced with photo proof, and closing stock at each shop is noted during the visit. Flagged visits (outside the geofence, too short or with no photo) go to the manager.

Orders and prices. Orders are priced from price lists, with overrides for large buyers and sub-distributors. VAT applies only on taxable lines, and invoices follow the IRD format with numbering per fiscal year.

Delivery. Each order has an assigned delivery person who sees the amount due and directions, records delivery with GPS, photo and receiver's name, and can collect payment afterwards. Deliveries far from the shop's saved location are flagged.

Breakage and returns. Returns go through review and are approved into a branch with a credit note and a reason. For shops served through a dealer, the dealer accepts or rejects the return in the dealer app.

Credit. Due days are fixed at dispatch, payments settle the oldest bills first, and the party statement and aging show which shops ask for the next load before paying the last. Weekly collection plans give each salesperson a list. Follow-ups track promised payments, and internal notes ("prefers morning delivery") stay private from dealers.

A small worked example (hypothetical)

Suppose a salesperson visits a general store that still holds a large number of 15-litre buckets from the last delivery. Instead of booking another forty, she records the closing stock, books a smaller order of storage boxes that the shop has run out of, and notes that the buckets are moving slowly in that market. Across the week, the manager sees the same note from three shops on the route and moves that bucket into the "slow" family for the next reorder. The scenario is invented for illustration.

Your first 30 days

1. Week 1. Sort SKUs into families and enter weights for the bulkiest items.
2. Week 2. Set up one route per market zone and start a load sheet for the heaviest days.
3. Week 3. Agree the damage rule with your shops and start photo records at delivery.
4. Week 4. Review slow families and overdue shops, and decide what to stop reordering.

Related reading

Home appliances and electronics, dead and slow-moving stock, delivery and proof of delivery and collecting payments on time.

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