Starter Kit. Idea 173 of 500. Cluster 7
Export labels checked and signed off by a native speaker, against the rules of the German, Japanese, Chinese and Arabic markets
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
Find one native speaker for each of German, Japanese, Chinese and Arabic, at home or among Sri Lankans abroad, who will read a label and sign a note that its wording and its required details are right for that market. Take the label of one product already exported and have all four checked. Show the producer what was wrong. Then offer the check to five more exporters at a fixed fee per language.
- Who pays first
- An exporter whose importer in Germany, Japan or the Gulf has sent a label back, or whose shipment was held over its wording.
- What leaves today
- Labels that fail a market's rules send the product back in bulk to be relabelled abroad, and the importer keeps that work and that margin.
Ask first
- Sri Lanka Standards Institution. Ask what a label must carry before goods leave, and who checks it.
- Sri Lanka Export Development Board. Ask which markets reject labels most often, and for what.
Check before you spend
Confirm each checker is a native speaker who knows that market's labelling rules, what the signed note promises, and who carries the cost if a label is still refused.
Find out these three numbers
- What will an exporter pay for one label checked and signed?
- Which of the four markets do exporters near you sell to?
- How many labels a month does one exporter send out?
A comparison from the book
Costa Rica. Chapter Eleven
"trained technicians, local suppliers, and the skill of meeting the world's safety rules"
Meeting another market's rules is a skill, and the exporter will pay for it.
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.