In keeping with the focus of this blog, this post should have only talked about a beautiful lifestyle store in Goa called The Karma Collection, but the romantic in me has to tell you the story behind it too.
The story is about a British girl called Giane and a Rajasthani boy called Babu.Babu ran a textile shop in Udaipur and Giane, a happy tourist walked in to his store and bou
ght some stuff. On the way from Udaipur to Jodhpur, Giane fell off the footboard of a bus and hurt her ankle badly.Babu heard about this, and came to Jodhpur just to make sure she was okay. He looked after her while she recovered, and the two realized they wanted a life together. The couple moved to Goa because it was more westernized, and set up their shop Karma Collection on Baga Beach in 2005.
They started out with only the stock from Babu’s store, and with the meager capital they had, they gradually filled it up with other stock - diaries, jewellery, leather, clothes, and unusual gifts. Giane insisted that it be a fixed price store, and the people who visited simply loved both – the prices and the stuff!
Their quest to stock different and unique stuff has made their store quite a hit with the tourists on Baga Beach. They also sometimes design their own stuff. They are very particular about quality and sell only stuff that lasts.
Being opposites, they have nicely divided their roles – Giane sources, designs and arranges the stuff, and Babu who is an excellent businessman takes care of the negotiating, pricing and selling! Says Giane, “Luckily our various strengths and weaknesses complement each other. I'm absolutely obsessive about display and Babu often jokes that my job is to move things one inch to the left or right and back again ten times until I'm 100% happy its exactly in the right spot! I drive the people I work with insane because I nit-pick about tiny details but I think that is what makes our shop different from the competition and I've got no intentions of changing! Babu is fantastic with people and is very much the face of the shop. He's the one people like and remember and without him the business wouldn't run.”
Wasn’t that a beautiful story? Well, if you want to know more, visit their website.
Karma Collection is located at
Lucia Bella's Guest House,
7/173a Saunta Vaddo
Baga Beach, Calagute,
Bardez, Goa 403516, India