Bharat Tex 2026 ran for four days in July at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi. More than 7,000 buyers walked the halls, from over 40 countries. I was watching one Surat stand closely, because the mill on it, Rungta International, was running their whole stand on an app we built together on their own floor. This is what those four days taught me about what belongs on a buyer's phone, and on your salesman's, before she walks away.
The 2027 dates were not announced when I wrote this. Check bharat-tex.com and register early. Everything below is worth doing whenever the dates land.
The four days, honestly
Day one, every mill's salesmen are sharp. By day three, the same buyer has asked composition, GSM, width and stock at forty stands, and she stops at the ones where the answer came in ten seconds. On day five, most stands go home with a pile of business cards, three cuttings that left with buyers nobody can name, and follow-ups that start from memory.
That is the whole game. Not the stand design. Not the lighting. Whether your man could answer her in front of her, and whether anyone can find her a week later.
What goes on the phone, in order
1. The whole range, searchable. Every sort with its photograph, composition, GSM, width, structure and what is actually available. Search by sort number, composition or garment. Filter by GSM or season. When she points at something on the rail, your salesman finds it on his phone instead of walking to the racks. A salesman who joined last month answers as well as the owner.
2. Her enquiry, while she is standing there. The fabrics she picked, her quantity, her target price, her note about shade or MOQ. Photograph her business card and the contact fields fill themselves. The enquiry gets a number and an owner, and the whole team can see it. Not the back of a card. Not one man's notebook.
3. The cutting she took, in her name. Reserve a sample against her enquiry and it comes off your available metres. When it leaves the stand it is issued to her, marked as a loan if it is coming back. On day five you know exactly which cuttings left with whom.
4. Her selection, sent before she leaves. A branded PDF of her picks with her company on the cover, on her WhatsApp from the stand. She lands in Dhaka or Istanbul with your fabrics already on her phone, not a card in a bag.
Two more if you have them: photo match, where a buyer's reference photo finds the closest cloth you already stock; and a garment render, so she sees your fabric as a dress or a kurta rather than a swatch. Directional, not a production sample, and say so.
What Rungta did
Ten salespeople, 800 fabrics live, one shared log, four days, no signal half the time. It worked offline and synced when the wifi came back. Every enquiry was numbered and owned. Every sample was tracked. The follow-up list existed on the evening of day four, sorted by country and by who owned the buyer, with tasks and dates already on it.
They did not write anything on the back of a card. That is the whole result.
If you are doing it yourself
You do not need us to get the first two wins.
- Photograph the range now. One clean shot per sort, on a plain background, and put the sort number, composition, GSM and width in a sheet. Eight weeks out, not one.
- Build the enquiry form before the fair. Even a Google Form on the salesman's phone with buyer, fabrics, quantity, target price and a photo of the card. The discipline is what matters; the tool can come later.
- Number the cuttings you take to the fair and write the buyer's name against each one that leaves. A notebook at the stand is enough for one fair.
- Use it on ordinary days for two weeks before. Salesmen who first open a tool at the stand will fight it. Salesmen who used it at the counter last Tuesday will not think about it.
When the sheet has 500 rows and four salesmen updating it, that is the day it becomes an app problem. Fabrary is that app, and there is a working slice of it on the Fabrary page you can try now, no sign-up. Or message me and I will show you the Rungta log on your own phone.