Idea 496 of 500. Cluster 28: Coming home
Shipping and customs clearance for a household coming home, from the packing abroad to the door at home
The mechanism, from the book
The first one through pays the whole price, and everyone after walks through an open door. These are the doors.
Every idea in cluster 28 uses this mechanism.
A first step
Ask 5 families who came home in the last 2 years what moving their household involved, how long the goods sat at the port, and what went wrong at customs. Turn their answers into one checklist from packing to the door. Then find a shipping agent abroad and a licensed clearing agent here who will work together, and offer to manage one family's move for a fee. A family whose goods arrive on the day promised is the proof.
- Who pays first
- A family abroad planning to come home, who dread the port and the paperwork and will pay one person to handle it from start to finish.
- What leaves today
- A move that goes wrong at the port makes the first months at home miserable, and the family that suffers it warns everyone else to stay away.
The idea and the mechanism are from the book. The first step was written for this site as a suggestion; if you know a better one, say so.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
The only test any idea on this site has to pass. The four rules that go with it are here.
What the book adds
And a five hundred and first, which is not mine to write: the next five hundred, because this list is the country's.
In the book
- Ch. EightWhat It Costs to Go First
The first one through pays the whole price - Ch. SeventeenOne Building
Sri Lankans abroad given precise roles: sponsor, mentor, introduce
More from cluster 28
- 497Returnee co-working houses in Colombo and Kandy, so that the first year is not spent alone
- 498A returnee investment fund that takes 20 small stakes in this list, run by returnees
- 499The Sri Lanka House desk that meets the returning professional at the airport with a list of who wants to hire them
- 500A licence-to-practise service for returning professionals: the doctor's, nurse's, engineer's or accountant's foreign qualification recognised at home, paperwork, exams and all, for a fixed fee
Idea 496 of the 500 in the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? Every one can be started by one person, one family or one small firm.