Starter Kit. Idea 398 of 500. Cluster 20
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.
The 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.
Ask first
- Sri Lanka Export Development Board. Ask whether support exists for small firms selling clothes directly to customers abroad.
- Sri Lanka Customs. Ask what paperwork a single parcel of clothing sent to a customer abroad needs.
Check before you spend
That your measuring guide gives a good fit without a fitting, a clear policy for remakes, and the import charges a customer abroad may pay.
Find out these three numbers
- What does a made-to-measure shirt cost abroad?
- How many orders can one cutter and sewer finish a week?
- What share of orders come back for alterations?
A comparison from the book
Britain's trade scheme. Chapter Sixteen
"Britain's clothing rule lets a garment sewn here sell in Britain without a tariff"
A shirt sewn here can reach a British customer without a tariff; selling to that customer directly keeps the rest.
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.