Starter Kit. Idea 447 of 500. Cluster 23
Women-led export businesses in this list given the first slot at the shared trade-fair stand
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
Pick three women-led businesses from this list that already make something to export, and ask each what it would need to stand at a trade fair: samples, price lists, a card in English. Then approach the other exporters planning to share a stand and ask them to give the first slot to women-led firms. The proof is a slot agreed and three sets of samples ready.
- Who pays first
- A woman exporter who could never afford a stand of her own, and pays a share because the first slot puts her product in front of buyers.
- What leaves today
- Products made by women often leave through a trader who sells them abroad under another name; a trade-fair slot lets the maker meet the buyer.
Ask first
- Sri Lanka Export Development Board. Ask how a shared stand at a trade fair is booked and shared among exporters.
- National Crafts Council. Ask which women-led craft makers are ready to show at a trade fair.
Check before you spend
Confirm the stand's terms with the fair and with every exporter sharing it, who carries the samples, and export registration for anyone taking orders.
Find out these three numbers
- What does a shared stand cost each exporter?
- Which buyers at the fair want what these women make?
- How many orders would one fair need to pay for itself?
A comparison from the book
Sri Lanka House. Chapter Seventeen
"for the districts, for women-led businesses, and for people who have never exported"
Hold a share of the space for women-led firms in writing, so the rule can be checked.
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.