Starter Kit. Idea 213 of 500. Cluster 10
A Ceylon tea museum with a shop that sells every estate, not one company's
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.
The first step
Draft a list of 20 estates whose teas you would stock, then ask 5 estate managers whether they would supply a shop that sells every estate side by side at a fair margin. At the same time, ask a hotel or visitor centre in the hills whether it would lend a room for a trial weekend exhibition. The proof is 5 supply agreements in principle and a room.
- Who pays first
- A visitor to the hills who has seen one company's factory and wants to taste and buy across the whole island in one place.
- What leaves today
- Visitors see tea through one company's shop, so the story of Ceylon tea as a whole, and the sale of most estates' teas, never reaches them.
Ask first
- Sri Lanka Tea Board. Ask whether a museum shop selling every estate's tea needs a tea licence.
- Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority. Ask whether a tea museum can be listed as a visitor attraction.
Check before you spend
Whether the building may open to the public as a museum and shop, and whether each estate agrees to supply on fair terms.
Find out these three numbers
- How many visitors pass the site in a week in season?
- What margin will estates accept from a shop selling all of them?
- What would a visitor pay to enter?
A comparison from the book
Sri Lanka House. Chapter Seventeen
"The rule is quality, story, origin, export potential and repeat-purchase value,"
Choose the estates by quality and story, not by who pays for the shelf.
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.