Idea 398 of 500. Cluster 20: Design, fashion and the apparel spillover
Made-to-measure shirts and dresses ordered online from abroad, cut and sewn here to the customer's own measurements
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.
Every idea in cluster 20 uses this mechanism.
A first step
Write a simple measuring guide, and ask a skilled tailor to make 5 shirts or dresses to measurements sent by friends abroad who followed it. Post each finished piece and ask how it fits. Fix the guide wherever the fit was wrong, then offer 20 orders through 2 online groups for Sri Lankans abroad. Repeat orders are the proof the measurements work.
- Who pays first
- A professional abroad who cannot find clothes that fit off the rail and will pay for a shirt cut to their own measurements.
- What leaves today
- The island's tailors sew to the world's standard for other people's labels; made-to-measure orders let the same skill sell under its own name.
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. ThreeWhat We Have Already Built
MAS and Brandix: the world's first green apparel factories
More from cluster 20
- 396A Sri Lankan lingerie and swimwear brand, since the factories that make everyone else's are here
- 397Sportswear brands using the technical fabric and the cutters that already exist
- 399A fashion school linked to the factories, so the designers do not have to leave
- 400Surplus and off-cut businesses: the factories' waste as a design material
- 401Furniture design in rubberwood and rattan, for export
- 402Interior-design firms serving the villa and hotel owners, with the products sourced from this list
Idea 398 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.