Idea 250 of 500. Cluster 12: The gem chain, from Ratnapura to the certificate
Garnet, spinel and the lesser stones marketed as a range, since they are mined anyway and thrown into parcels
The mechanism, from the book
The sapphire is mined here and cut here, and its value is certified in Basel and turned into money in Geneva. Every step of that chain can be built at home, and the first one is the piece of paper.
Every idea in cluster 12 uses this mechanism.
A first step
Find out from 5 dealers in Ratnapura what they do with the garnets, spinels and other lesser stones in their parcels and what they would sell them for. Buy a small lot, have them sorted and cut, and offer them as a matched set to 3 jewellers who make affordable pieces. The proof is a price per carat and an order.
- Who pays first
- A jeweller who makes affordable coloured-stone pieces and wants a named island range at a price below the sapphire.
- What leaves today
- The lesser stones are mined anyway and thrown into parcels at low prices, so value the island has already dug up leaves unnamed.
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. TwoAn Island Nobody Has Counted
The sapphires in the island's inventory - Ch. SixteenThe Bridge
Basel, Geneva and the Swiss gem bridge
More from cluster 12
- 236A gem laboratory in Colombo to the standard of the Swiss ones, with a foreign partner if it must, so the origin report is issued where the stone was mined
- 237Jewellery design studios employing the young designers who now leave for Bangkok and Dubai
- 238A Ratnapura mine visit sold as a day, with a licensed dealer and a laboratory report on anything you buy
- 239Gem-cutting apprenticeships, paid, with the graduates employed by the studios above
- 240A Ceylon sapphire brand for engagement rings, sold online to Sri Lankans abroad and beyond, with the stone's story traced from pit to finger
- 241Auction days in Colombo for the trade, with international buyers flown in, the way Geneva does it twice a year
Idea 250 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.