Starter Kit. Idea 410 of 500. Cluster 20
Repair, alteration and tailoring services for the visitors, priced and done in a day
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
Set up a table in a guesthouse lobby or beside a hotel with a tailor, a price list for common jobs and a same-day promise. Ask two guesthouse managers to hand out your card at check-in, for a small share of each job. The jobs done and paid for in the first week, and the reviews visitors leave, are your proof.
- Who pays first
- A visitor who has split a seam or wants a garment copied before flying home, and pays for a tailor who finishes it in a day.
- What leaves today
- Tailoring skill is mostly spent on low-paid factory lines; a same-day service for visitors earns tourist money for the tailor directly.
Ask first
- the local council (Municipal Council, Urban Council or Pradeshiya Sabha). Ask whether a tailoring table in a lobby needs a trade licence.
- Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority. Ask whether services sold in guesthouses need any registration.
Check before you spend
The guesthouse's written agreement and share, a trade licence if one is needed, and a fair, posted price list for every common job.
Find out these three numbers
- How many jobs come in the first week?
- What prices do visitors accept for common repairs?
- What share will a guesthouse want?
A comparison from the book
Sigiriya. Chapter Five
"What nobody forgives is being charged a premium and then embarrassed."
Post fair prices and keep the same-day promise; visitors forgive a price, not a broken promise.
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.