Idea 206 of 500. Cluster 10: Tea, beyond the auction
Tea cosmetics: creams and serums with a named estate's extract
The mechanism, from the book
The Colombo auction sells tea by the lot to a buyer who blends it under his own name. Every step after the auction is where the money is, and every step can be done here by somebody who is not a plantation company.
Every idea in cluster 10 uses this mechanism.
A first step
Get a few kilos of leaf from a named field through an estate manager, then approach a small cosmetics maker or a trained formulator and ask what it would cost to make 50 jars of a cream with the estate's extract. Show a labelled sample to 10 spa or boutique hotel managers and ask whether they would sell it. The proof is a formulation cost and one stockist.
- Who pays first
- A spa or boutique hotel that wants a product to sell guests which carries the name of the estate they drove through to get there.
- What leaves today
- Tea extract goes into foreign cosmetics as an anonymous ingredient, while the estate that grew it earns the price of the leaf and nothing for the name.
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. ElevenThe Mechanisms
The auction and every step after it - Ch. TwoAn Island Nobody Has Counted
Tea whose name the world has known for 200 years
More from cluster 10
- 201Single-estate teas sold direct to consumers abroad by subscription, with the estate's story
- 202A tea sommelier course in Nuwara Eliya, certified, for the hotel trade of the world
- 203Tea tasting rooms in Kandy, Ella and Colombo run like wine bars
- 204Cold-brew and sparkling Ceylon tea in cans for the Gulf and Asia
- 205Matcha-style ground green tea from the upcountry, for cafés
- 207A picking-and-processing day at a factory sold as an experience, with your own kilo at the end
Idea 206 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.