Starter Kit. Idea 397 of 500. Cluster 20
Sportswear brands using the technical fabric and the cutters that already exist
The mechanism, from the book
Sri Lankans make the world's underwear to the world's standard, and the country has no fashion brand of its own that the world has heard of.
The first step
Choose one garment, running shorts or a cricket training top, and ask a factory's development team for the cost of 50 units in a technical fabric they already use. Offer the batch to two sports clubs or schools with their crest on it, at a price that covers the cost. A club's order is the proof, and its feedback is your second design.
- Who pays first
- A sports club or school at home or abroad that buys kit every season and would buy kit designed here and made in the same factories as the big brands.
- What leaves today
- The skill to make the world's sportswear is here but the brand margin is taken abroad; a local brand keeps it on the island.
Ask first
- Sri Lanka Standards Institution. Ask whether any standard exists for technical sportswear that buyers would recognise.
- Sri Lanka Export Development Board. Ask whether support exists for new sportswear brands.
Check before you spend
Permission to use each club's or school's crest, the fabric's performance claims in writing, and the factory's minimum order.
Find out these three numbers
- What does a factory charge for a small batch?
- What price will a club pay per garment?
- How many clubs nearby buy kit each year?
A comparison from the book
Britain's trade scheme. Chapter Sixteen
"add the value in Sri Lanka and sell it in Britain with no tax at the border"
The buyer's own rules reward value added here; a brand keeps more of it than a factory order.
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.