Starter Kit. Idea 67 of 500. Cluster 3
The tea-factory tin: a small quantity from the estate you visited, with the date you were there
The mechanism, from the book
The Zermatt water bottle. Sigiriya has not got a stone with its own name on it.
The first step
Agree with one tea factory that runs visits that you will pack small tins from that day's production, dated, for visitors to buy on the way out. Pack 20 by hand for one week and sell them at the exit. If most visitors who see the tin buy one, the factory has a new product.
- Who pays first
- Visitors leaving a factory tour who want a keepsake of that exact day, and the factory, which gains a new margin.
- What leaves today
- Visitors taste the tea and leave with nothing made that day; a dated tin sells the visit back to them.
Ask first
- Sri Lanka Tea Board. Ask what registration a factory needs to pack and sell small tins to visitors.
- Sri Lanka Standards Institution. Ask what labelling a dated tin of tea should carry.
Check before you spend
That the factory can sell packed tea directly to visitors, that the tins are safe for food, and that the printed date is honestly the visit date.
Find out these three numbers
- What will a visitor pay for a tin dated on their visit?
- What does one small printed tin cost?
- How many visitors tour the factory each week?
A comparison from the book
Sri Lanka. Appendix
"A sale is worth something once. A customer who can reorder from"
A tin from the estate you visited is how the reorder from home begins.
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.