Idea 408 of 500. Cluster 20: Design, fashion and the apparel spillover
A design fair in Colombo where the world's buyers come to the makers, once a year
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
Collect a list of 30 makers from this cluster who would show at a fair, and ask each whether they would pay a stand fee. Then write to 20 buyers from boutiques and concept stores abroad and ask whether they would come if the makers and the dates were fixed. Stand-fee commitments and buyers' written intentions are your proof.
- Who pays first
- A maker who wants to meet foreign buyers without travelling to a fair abroad, and would pay a stand fee at home.
- What leaves today
- Makers now travel abroad to sell or never meet buyers at all; a fair in Colombo brings the buyers, and their orders, to the island.
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 408 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.