Starter Kit. Idea 441 of 500. Cluster 23
Women's craft co-operatives with a single brand and a single buyer abroad
The mechanism, from the book
The single largest unused asset in the country is sitting at home, and the reasons are practical, not attitude.
The first step
Collect one finished piece from each of eight women's craft groups in a district, photograph them against one background under one label, and send the set to three shop buyers abroad through contacts among Sri Lankans abroad. Ask each for the price and quantity at which they would place a first order. The proof is one buyer naming a price for a single branded range.
- Who pays first
- A shop buyer abroad who wants one reliable supplier with consistent quality, not 20 groups sending samples separately.
- What leaves today
- Crafts leave the island unbranded through traders who keep the margin; one brand and one buyer let the makers keep it instead.
Ask first
- National Crafts Council. Ask whether they can introduce women's craft groups that want to sell under one label.
- Sri Lanka Export Development Board. Ask which buyers abroad they know of who take crafts in regular orders.
Check before you spend
Confirm a written agreement among the groups on the shared label, quality and payment, and the export registration needed before the first order leaves.
Find out these three numbers
- What price does each group get now for one piece?
- How many pieces a month could the groups make together?
- What would a shop abroad pay for a regular order?
A comparison from the book
New Zealand. Chapter Eleven
"When 100 small producers from the same country sell into the same foreign market, a buyer plays them off against each other"
One label and one seller stop the groups undercutting each other in front of the buyer.
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.