Growing up, Jose had always seen her mother work hard at the shop. She had employed people, given them livelihoods. Taking inspiration from her mother, Jose put up dresses for baby girls—like those she had stitched for her daughter—on the table. Her mother’s customers started picking up the pretty embroidered and smocked dresses. “At that time, Kochi was a suburb, and everyone knew every other person. So slowly, word spread,” recalls Jose.

When enquiries for such dresses started coming in, Jose purchased fabric from the local shops, hired a girl from a Christian convent nearby to embroider and smock, and got them stitched by different local tailors. The stitched dresses got sold immediately. Needing more girls for work, Jose approached more convents around Kochi. Some that had run of work were ready to let the women work outside. A group of women rented out a space near Jose’s house and started working for her.

The first store

In 1984, Jose opened her first retail store—Tara Baby Shop—on Kochi’s M.G. Road. As it happened, it was also the first shop in town that exclusively sold clothing for babies. Tara had everything a new mother needed.

Meanwhile, more women approached Jose to do embroidery and smocking. Since they had family responsibilities, they could not come to Kochi to work. At that time, Tresa Placid, one of the senior embroiderers and smockers at Tara, went to these women’s places every Sunday with the fabric to get these women started. Then Tresa would collect the finished pieces and take them back to Edappally.

Once the delivery and collection process was established, all the work was outsourced and Tresa started grouping the women in each location into individual units. A unit could have two or more women. They would get together at one of their houses to stitch. These units functioned from places such as Gudalur, Thrissur, Thuravoor, Perumpadappu, Chellanam, Alappuzha, Kottayam, and Valiyavila, among others. Right now, there are about 100 units of women around Kochi working for Tara.

The designs and colour choices were entirely Jose’s, and the handwork is popularly called ‘convent embroidery’. Most of the dresses had a simple elephant or a rabbit, or fine floral work on the yoke, hem, and collars.

When the orders multiplied, the production details were written down on a paper and tagged to the fabric. The production process was quite painstaking and time-consuming. “Embroidered fabric is sent back for smocking, then sent for stitching, and then for buttons. After stitching and a final quality check, we sent it to the shop,” she recalls.

A brand with a heart

Sometimes, all the outsourced pieces did not return on time. Some came back stained and even burnt because some places had no electricity and the women would have worked with a kerosene lamp that accidentally touched the fabric. But Jose never charged any security deposit for the leftover pieces or demurrage fee for the damaged pieces. She indeed went out on a limb to help the women. In fact, during the off-season, the fisherwomen at Cherthala had a lot of free time and were keen to do embroidery work for Jose. They could produce many pieces together. Even though Tara didn’t need so much stock at that time, Jose took them in. “She made it a point to pay them right away,” says Tresa.

“It’s a typical neighbourhood brand that fulfilled its responsibility perfectly by providing employment and livelihoods to the women from the same neighbourhood. The hand-embroidery on the baby dresses is exquisite,” says Omana Koshy, a long-time friend and Tara customer for more than 40 years.

“Once someone told me that I had spoilt the women. But I have stood my ground. I planned production according to their time and strengths. And the business moved ahead because Tara’s didn’t work in factory mode,” explains Jose.

Very soon, Tara opened a second branch in Ernakulam and then a third in Thrissur. Still, women kept reaching out and becoming a part of the units. So, one day, on a whim to expand more so she could help more people, Jose packed some dresses and travelled to meet with a supplier in Bangalore (now called Bengaluru). “The dresses were rejected because they weren’t like the mass-produced ones,” she recalls.

Since she had been designing and getting the clothes done, Jose’s sister bought samples from the U.S. to get the sizing and stitching done accurately. Jose still has those samples in her cupboard. In order to help the smockers, she also bought a pleater from abroad so that she could hand over the fabric pre-pleated.

Dealing with challenges

The floods that hit Kerala in 2019 brought the first roadblock to sales. Customer enthusiasm dipped and a lot of fabric in the women’s homes got washed away. “The women were too scared to come and tell me that they had lost it (the fabric). But we went to visit them and helped them in every possible way,” says Jose.

The pandemic was a bigger hit. Tara launched online but sales plummeted. Even then, Jose didn’t want the women to stop work because, she says, “ I knew they needed the money.” The consequence was too much extra stock and the sales didn’t pick up at all. “Luckily, except for a week’s delay here and there, we have been able to pay the women on time so far,” says Jose. But the Ernakulam branch had to be shut, and it was a hard call for Jose as the branch had been her favourite.

Jose has never aimed for high profits. All she needed was money to pay the girls. “Maybe that’s not the way to do business,” she quips looking back. “The women who have worked here… have benefitted in every possible way,” says Tresa. Some have used the money for home improvement, some to support the education of their children, repay loans and all of them attribute their prosperity to Annu chechi (elder sister),” she beams.

But things around have started to change, says Jose. A convent that used to stitch and then take the finished products back for sale stopped the exchange abruptly. Her efforts to help the women engaged also came to a naught. “For all I know, these charities are coming to an end now,” says Jose.

A new beginning

Tara pulled the shutters down at its first store on Kochi’s M.G. Road this August. Only the Thrissur store remains, while Tara’s products are available on its website. Plus, there is a modest shop in Edappally, next to Jose’s home, where Tara’s fresh innings is going to start. Through the venture, Jose wants to help the women who still need the work. “I hope people will check us out because we are located a little far from town,” says Jose. She would certainly miss going to the M.G. Road shop every evening.

“As a young girl, I remember mom working hard at the shop and coming home later than my dad. On the shop floor, the women would tell Malayalam folk tales, or the radio would play. Mom always said that she has five kids—counting the two shops and us three siblings,” reminisces Jose’s eldest daughter, Theresa Joseph, a graphic designer. Theresa and her sister are pulling out all stops to join their mom and extend Tara’s reach across the world.

“This is the best and most satisfying work I have done in my entire life,” a sex worker who had once embroidered for Tara had told Jose. Annu Jose now wants Tara to honour such women and keep their passion going. “The women have done this work fighting many odds. Each of Tara’s dresses is imbued with the women’s stories,” she says.

Tara Baby Shop

From baby clothes to empowering women, Tara Baby Shop has done it all for more than 40 years