School uniform shop earns more as classes resume

Diome Turado,55 and her friend and business partner Flor Plarido,53 is busy attending to their orders in their stall at the heart of Ramos Public Market. (CDN PHOTO/ APPLE TAAS)

AT Potter’s Creation Clothier in Ramos Public Market, business is brisk especially with the resumption of classes.

Shop owner Diome Turado, 55, said their earnings surge as customers flock to their shop to have uniforms made, repaired or altered.

She shares the shop with her good friend, 53-year-old Flor Plarido.

“Our earnings increase. We are able to make 30 sets of uniforms a week,” she said in Cebuano.

Turado said they don’t book more orders than what they can deliver.

On ordinary days, they earn around P1,000 a day. With the resumption of classes, their earnings jump to P5,000 a day.

This is in spite of the growing trend of schools obliging their students to purchase school uniforms from them.

“Despite that, some customers still come to us for help in altering their uniforms,” she said.

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Turado has an accountancy degree, which she achieved after working her way through school. But her first love is sewing clothes, she said.

She learned to sew after her parents told her they could no longer send her to high school.

“My mother told me it’s enough that I graduate from elementary because I’m going to marry anyway. She wanted me to help in the farm,” Turado, a native of Carcar, said.

To go to school, she said she accepted a job offer in a dress shop in Cebu City and learned the trade at 17.

She took night high school classes at the University of Cebu. She worked all the way through college, juggling classes and work.