Idea 24 of 500. Cluster 2: Sell the making, not the object
Batik workshops where you take home what you made
The mechanism, from the book
The craft cannot be copied and the object can. In Europe people queue to watch glass being blown and then buy the glass.
Every idea in cluster 2 uses this mechanism.
A first step
Ask a batik maker whether you can host a 3-hour class in their workshop, where each visitor waxes and dyes a small cloth to take home. Agree the split, print a simple flyer, and leave it with the two nearest guesthouses. Six paid participants in the first fortnight, each leaving with a cloth they made, prove the workshop sells.
- Who pays first
- Visitors with a free afternoon who want a souvenir they made themselves, and guesthouses happy to sell the class to them.
- What leaves today
- A finished batik sells once at a bargained price; the afternoon of making it sells the craft itself, which cannot be copied.
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. FiveThe Most Photographed Rock in the World
Courses instead of meals, the one the book would build first
Idea 24 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.