Idea 400 of 500. Cluster 20: Design, fashion and the apparel spillover
Surplus and off-cut businesses: the factories' waste as a design material
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
Visit one factory's waste manager and ask what happens to off-cuts and surplus stock, and whether you could buy a bag of it. Make a small batch of products from that bag, patchwork bags, cushion covers or children's clothes, and sell them at a weekend market. The price the batch reaches, against what you paid for the waste, is your proof.
- Who pays first
- A shopper at home or a visitor who likes well-made things with a story, with the factory's waste as the selling point.
- What leaves today
- Factory off-cuts are dumped or sold as rags; turning them into products captures value from material that has already been paid for.
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
- 398Batik and handloom in contemporary fashion, sold in London and Tokyo, not only at the airport
- 399A fashion school linked to the factories, so the designers do not have to leave
- 401Furniture design in coconut timber, rubberwood and rattan, for export
- 402Interior-design firms serving the villa and hotel owners, with the products sourced from this list
Idea 400 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.