Narayanpet weavers learning design interventions

Not confining its initiative merely to training, the district administration is also initiating measures to improve the marketability of the weavers’ products.

Narayanpet: Weavers of Narayanpet are now learning the art of blending their contemporary designs with the latest ones to improve the marketability of their products and reap good profits. The district administration is training about 50 women and traditional weavers in design intervention, quality control and improvement techniques besides generating marketing opportunities by roping in GoCoop, a virtual marketplace that connects artisans, weaver cooperatives and clusters directly with consumers across the world, District Collector D Harichandana told Telangana Today after inaugurating the two-day training programme on Thursday.

Appealing to the weavers to make good use of the opportunity and learn the latest design interventions, she said the objective behind organising the training programme, besides helping the weavers, is to motivate youth and women in the district to take up marketing jobs to promote traditional handloom and handicraft.

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Not confining its initiative merely to training, the district administration is also initiating measures to improve the marketability of the weavers’ products. After the training programme, GoCoop and Narayanpet district DRDO will enter into an MoU to produce an exclusive range of Narayanpet handlooms designed for GoCoop, she said.

“Gocoop will also provide an enhanced marketing platform for Narayanpet traditional handlooms and take them to a wider range of customers enhancing livelihood opportunities for weavers here, who barely earn subsistence wages,” Harichandana said.

There are about 8,000 weavers in the district. Each weaver can produce a saree per day. “Narayanpet fabric is popularly known as the fabric of God’s. It’s unique for its temple borders, Rudraksha Sawan and elephant borders. Despite being GI indexed, the Narayanpet products usually suffer due to their traditional outlook,” she added.

To overcome these challenges, the district administration in association with the Handloom Department had initiated different measures to scale up the market for Narayanpet weavers’ products through design intervention and other means.