The door-to-door cloth trade was an indispensable element in the cultural landscape of Orawa for more than 200 years. There were a few categories of cloth traders but most popular of them were cloth selling gazdas who each year set off on a long journey with a cart loaded with goods and harnessed to two horses. They sometimes were independent merchants or could be employed by larger entrepreneurs who supplied them with goods on credit and settled with them on their return. Depending on their means, they set off with one or up to three sturdy carts, usually painted blue, each of them harnessed to two horses. The goods were usually kept in chests next to a portable stall and a stock of animal feed. Cloth carts started their journey very early, some of them the end of February or early in March and usually returned in the first days of December, full of food and wine acquired along the way. They usually travelled by night. On the road, cloth traders grouped themselves by villages and kept to specific routes as they had their fixed places at the market and also shared the market among themselves (the rules were established in mid- 18th century). Employed traders could with time become independent and, as such, enjoyed a high social status, were considered shrewd, excellent organisers and enlightened travellers but they had virtually no chance of entering the circle of the old ‘aristocracy’ of traders. The latter came from close-knit groups divided into families and communities. They usually even married others from their circle, amassed significant wealth and led their lives on an appropriate level. They owned more than a dozen carts driven by employed traders, had representatives and depots in various places, and were an influential layer of the Orawa society, aware of its power and able to defend its interests.