Stitch Partner Story: From a 1989 Nagpur Shop to All India

Written by Aashu, owner of Stitch Partner. This is our own story, from the shop counter in Itwari to orders across India and abroad.

Every day at our shop counter, someone walks in with a broken part in a plastic bag. They don’t know its name or its number. They only know that their machine has stopped, and their work has stopped with it. This is the Stitch Partner story, and it begins with one of those customers.

Where the Stitch Partner story begins: Itwari, 1989

My father, Chandanlal Motwani, opened Raj Sales in 1989 in Itwari, the old trading heart of Nagpur. He sold sewing machines and spare parts to tailors, boutiques and garment units. I grew up watching him listen to customers, look at a broken part and find the right one.

For more than 35 years the shop has run on trust. People come back because we help them, not because we push a sale. That idea is still the base of everything we do.

The customer who changed everything

One day a customer came to us with his machine completely stuck. He had already tried everywhere and nobody had the part. We tried too. We called vendor after vendor, and they could not find it either.

Finally we asked one of our vendors to arrange the part directly from the JACK company in China. It took effort, but his machine ran again. That day I realised something. There are many people like him, searching for one small part, with no one ready to take that much trouble for them.

That thought became Stitch Partner. I wanted to be the person who takes that trouble, for every tailor and every garment unit, not only for the ones who can walk into our shop.

Building a website for people who don’t know the part name

Most customers don’t know the part name or number. Some workers in our trade cannot read well, so even searching is hard for them. So my aim was simple: make the website so easy that anyone can find their part by looking, not by knowing.

We arranged parts by machine and by what the part looks like, added real photos, and kept our WhatsApp open so people can just send a picture. We are now building a camera “lens” feature, so a customer can take a photo of a part and see the same product on our website.

8 February 2025: we go live, and nothing happens

Stitch Partner went live on 8 February 2025. We were new to selling online. We did not know how to bring sales, and we never ran ads. In the first month we got zero orders. I will be honest, it was hard to keep believing.

Then on 1 March 2025 our first order came, through Google search. It was a pair of cloth cutting scissors for ₹290, ordered by Vicky Pathak from Pune. I still remember how happy we were. That month we got 3 orders, and every one of them felt like a celebration.

Six months to our first $100 month

Growth was slow. With no ads and no experience, we learned everything step by step: photos, part numbers, packing, couriers and answering customers quickly. It took us about six months to make our first $100 (around ₹8,300) of online sales in a single month, in August 2025.

For a big company that is a small number. For us it was proof that strangers in other cities trusted a small shop from Nagpur with their money and their machines.

Our proudest moment: a machine from the USA

A customer from Hyderabad, Telangana, had bought a machine from the USA. One part failed and he could not find it anywhere in India. His machine was standing at zero.

We found the part and helped him get his machine working again. Seeing his happiness when it ran was our proudest moment. That is exactly why we started.

Where Stitch Partner stands today

• 250 to 300 orders every month on our own website, apart from Flipkart and Amazon.
• Deliveries to almost every part of India, and orders from Bangladesh, UAE and South Africa.
• About 1,500 products online, and around 2,800 when you count every size and variant.
• A team of 4 people who help customers find the right part on WhatsApp and phone.
• Cash on delivery across India.

Online is still only about 10% of our business. Our shop counter is still busy every day. But the website lets us reach the tailor in a small town who has no spare parts shop nearby.

What’s next for Stitch Partner

Our Android and iOS apps are in progress and should be live in the first quarter of 2027. The photo search lens is also being built. Both have one goal: make finding the right part as easy as sending a photo to a friend.

My dream: a friend in every stitch

My dream is for Stitch Partner to be a real partner to every boutique, every garment unit and every laundry business. Not just a shop, but the friend you call when your machine stops. A friend in every stitch.

If your machine is stuck and you can’t find the part, send us a photo on WhatsApp (+91 74474 49590). You can also browse our repair guides and resources, our JACK part books or cloth cutting scissors, the product that brought our very first order.

Thank you to every customer who trusted us. You are part of this story.

Aashu
Stitch Partner, Itwari, Nagpur