Business is not charity

I was six then, when my Mom and Dad decided to start a departmental store called Dallas Departmental Store (probably at that time the soap opera Dallas was a popular TV show here) in Gulshan, one of the most posh and very high value area of the capital city of Dhaka, Bangladesh back in the mid 80s. Back then departmental stores was a new concept, and the only one that was available back then was in Dhanmondi area. For the readers who doesn’t have any idea on what departmental stores were back at that time, for them let me give a bit of idea. It was a large 1200 sqft of store area where you could buy cosmetics, fashion items, sarees, clothes, fast moving consumer goods that are not perishable and so on. The location was good, and there were some customers coming in. What was lacking was the timing. It was way too early to survive. The second problem was that a lot of friends and relations (not relatives) started coming in. It sounds great right? Wait for it.

Then due to too much of good faith, they (my Mom and Dad) agreed on giving out products in dues. The problem with these dues were that they were creating accounts receivables. It all started with one customer coming in, who made repeat purchases, or taking three or four sarees for…