Starter Kit. Idea 36 of 500. Cluster 2
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.
The 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.
Ask first
- Department of Ayurveda. Ask whether teaching herbal preparations to visitors needs a qualified practitioner present.
- National Medicines Regulatory Authority. Ask whether oils sold after the class count as products needing registration.
Check before you spend
That the herbs used are safe and legally sourced, that no health claims are made to guests, and whether products sold need registration.
Find out these three numbers
- What will a visitor pay to make and take home a bottle?
- What do herbs, oil and bottles cost per guest?
- Which spas or hotels would send guests to your class?
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.