Idea 26 of 500. Cluster 2: Sell the making, not the object
Handloom weaving demonstrations and short courses
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
Spend a morning with a handloom weaver and time one short demonstration: setting the warp, working the shuttle, finishing a strip. Then offer a 2-hour course to the nearest hotel's activities desk, with you handling bookings, and ask for a trial slot on its weekly list. Paid guests in the first week, and some of them buying cloth afterwards, are the proof.
- Who pays first
- Hotel activity desks that need something indoor and authentic to sell guests on rainy afternoons, and the guests themselves.
- What leaves today
- Handloom cloth leaves as cheap metres; a course sells the weaver's skill and sends the guest to buy the cloth at a full price.
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 26 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.