Starter Kit. Idea 153 of 500. Cluster 7
Product storytelling: someone who goes to the maker, learns the story and checks that every word on the label is true
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.
The first step
Visit one small producer near you, spend a morning watching the work, and write the story of the product in plain words: who makes it, where, how, and from what. Check every claim on the label against what you saw, and strike out any you cannot confirm. Give the producer the story free for a month and compare their enquiries before and after. Then offer the next producer the same visit at a fixed price.
- Who pays first
- A producer selling to foreign buyers who knows the product is good but cannot tell its story, and whose label makes claims nobody has checked.
- What leaves today
- Without a true story, island products sell as anonymous commodities, and the story is written by whoever repacks them abroad.
Ask first
- Department of the Registrar of Companies. Ask how to register a small writing service that works for producers.
- Inland Revenue Department. Ask how fees from producers at home and abroad should be declared.
Check before you spend
Confirm that every story is approved by the producer, that every claim on the label was seen or documented, and that no health or origin claim is made without proof.
Find out these three numbers
- What will a producer pay for a visit and a checked story?
- How many producers near you sell with no story at all?
- How long does one visit and one story take?
A comparison from the book
Sri Lanka House. Chapter Seventeen
"story, a shipping label, a buyer who knows your name."
A true story, told plainly, is one of the dozen small things that make money stay.
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.