Idea 151 of 500. Cluster 7: The infrastructure that makes the rest possible
Product photography services for small producers
The mechanism, from the book
The tiny business pathway. A rural woman with an exceptional product should not need photography, English copy, packaging design and a distributor before the world can find her.
Every idea in cluster 7 uses this mechanism.
A first step
Take your phone, a white sheet and a window, and photograph the products of three small producers near you for free: a pickle maker, a weaver, a spice seller. Give each the photos and ask them to post them wherever they sell. Then ask whether they would pay a fixed fee for the next set, and for the names of two other producers. Paid repeat work is the proof.
- Who pays first
- A small producer selling online who knows their products look worse in photos than they do in the hand.
- What leaves today
- A good product with a bad photo never gets past a foreign buyer's screen, so it stays local and sells for less.
The idea and the mechanism are from the book. The first step was written for this site as a suggestion; if you know a better one, say so.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
The only test any idea on this site has to pass. The four rules that go with it are here.
In the book
- Ch. SeventeenOne Building
The dozen small things that turn a product into money that stays
More from cluster 7
Idea 151 of the 500 in the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? Every one can be started by one person, one family or one small firm.