Idea 172 of 500. Cluster 7: The infrastructure that makes the rest possible
Trade-fair representation: one stand at the Frankfurt, Dubai or Tokyo fair shared by 20 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
Look up the cost of a small stand at one trade fair, in Frankfurt, Dubai or Tokyo, and divide it by 20. Write that number, plus travel and shipping, on one page. Show it to 25 small producers and ask whether they would each pay their share for you to represent their products on the stand. When 20 have paid deposits, book the stand.
- Who pays first
- A small producer who could never afford a stand alone but can afford one twentieth of one.
- What leaves today
- Island producers rarely meet foreign buyers face to face, so they sell to middlemen who take their goods to the fairs instead.
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 172 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.