Idea 36 of 500. Cluster 2: Sell the making, not the object
Traditional hair-oil and herbal preparation classes
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
Find a family or practitioner who still makes herbal hair oil by the old method and ask whether they would teach a 2-hour class. Run it once with four paying friends, bottling each person's oil to take away. Ask what they would pay, and whether they would buy refills by post. Those answers are the proof.
- Who pays first
- Visitors interested in natural care and wellness, who want to make the oil themselves and buy the refills afterwards.
- What leaves today
- Herbal knowledge passes from family to family unpaid; a class sells the method itself, and the refill trade follows the guest home.
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
More from cluster 2
Idea 36 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.