Starter Kit. Idea 408 of 500. Cluster 20
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.
The 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.
Ask first
- Sri Lanka Export Development Board. Ask whether support exists for bringing foreign buyers to meet makers.
Check before you spend
The venue's terms and dates, the stand fee and refund policy in writing, and what visas foreign buyers need to attend.
Find out these three numbers
- How many makers commit to a stand fee?
- How many buyers write that they would come?
- What does a venue cost for the days?
A comparison from the book
Thailand. Chapter Seventeen
"That is the Thailand mechanism, pointed the right way round."
Bring the buyers to the makers in one place, and the island owns the trading floor.
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.