Starter Kit. Idea 460 of 500. Cluster 24
A code on every pack of Ceylon tea, cinnamon and spice sold abroad, scanned by the buyer's phone to prove it is genuine, sold to the exporters as a service
The mechanism, from the book
The one thing. A country where people do not expect the rules to hold cannot build anything else, and proof can be manufactured by private people, one published record at a time.
The first step
Ask three tea or cinnamon exporters whether their buyers abroad have found fake Ceylon products, and what that costs them. Build a simple system that prints a unique code for each pack and shows the pack's details when it is scanned. Run a trial on one exporter's next shipment. The proof is the exporter paying to use it on the following one.
- Who pays first
- An exporter of Ceylon tea or cinnamon whose name is being copied abroad, and who pays to protect the price.
- What leaves today
- Copies sold as Ceylon take the price the real product has earned; a checkable code keeps that price with the island.
Ask first
- Sri Lanka Tea Board. Ask how a code on each pack could sit beside the existing Ceylon tea marks.
- Department of Export Agriculture. Ask how cinnamon and spice exporters prove origin to their buyers today.
Check before you spend
Confirm each exporter's permission to print on their packs, how scan data will be stored and protected, and who may see it.
Find out these three numbers
- What does a fake product cost an exporter each year?
- What does printing a unique code on each pack cost?
- How many buyers abroad would scan a pack?
A comparison from the book
Ethiopia. Chapter Four
"Owning a famous name, it turns out, is not enough"
A famous name needs proof behind it, and the code puts that proof on every pack.
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.