Idea 402 of 500. Cluster 20: Design, fashion and the apparel spillover
Interior-design firms serving the villa and hotel owners, with the products sourced from this list
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
Walk into three boutique hotels or villas in your area and ask the owner what they bought abroad for the rooms last year and why they could not find it at home. Then put together a sample room scheme using only products from this appendix, with prices. An owner who asks you to quote for one room is your first client.
- Who pays first
- A villa or boutique hotel owner refurbishing rooms who wants a local look and would pay a designer to source it from island makers.
- What leaves today
- Hotels import much of their furnishing from abroad; a local interior firm sends that spending to island makers instead.
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
- 400Surplus and off-cut businesses: the factories' waste as a design material
- 401Furniture design in coconut timber, rubberwood and rattan, for export
Idea 402 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.