Starter Kit. Idea 106 of 500. Cluster 5
Traditional hair oil production, branded and exported
The mechanism, from the book
Ayurveda is a system of medicine the world already recognises and seeks out. The demand is there; what Sri Lanka needs is more of its own names, known and asked for abroad.
The first step
Take a family hair-oil recipe you already know and make 50 bottles with a plain, clear label listing every ingredient. Contact a Sri Lankan grocer in London or Toronto through their shop's social page and ask whether they would take a trial carton on sale or return. Send photos of the bottle and label first. A shop that agrees to stock it gives you a real shelf price.
- Who pays first
- A Sri Lankan grocer abroad whose customers know the oil from home and cannot find a version they trust.
- What leaves today
- Hair oil made at home for generations earns nothing abroad, because the recipe has never been bottled, labelled and put on a foreign shelf.
Ask first
- National Medicines Regulatory Authority. Ask whether hair oil sold abroad needs registration here first.
- Sri Lanka Export Development Board. Ask which markets buy Sri Lankan hair oils and what help exists.
Check before you spend
Whether hair oil counts as a cosmetic or a medicine in each market, that labels make no health claims, and what testing buyers expect.
Find out these three numbers
- What do buyers abroad pay for a bottle of hair oil?
- What does a bottle cost to make and pack?
- Which shops abroad sell Sri Lankan hair oils now?
A comparison from the book
Sri Lankans abroad. Appendix
"The single most valuable thing a Sri Lankan in Melbourne or Zurich can do"
Sri Lankans abroad can be the first buyers and the first honest reviewers.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.