From a lawyer in Sri Lanka, why the
switch to become a social entrepreneur?
So actually after I
completed my higher education I worked
as a legal consultant especially in
corporate sector, so gradually I wanted
to change my path and start my own
business because I thought that starting
and running a business would be more
challenging and exciting and also since
I am most concerned about social
problems, I realized that becoming a
social entrepreneur would help me to
balance my concerns, interest and life as
well. So that's how I choose to become a
social entrepreneur. Loomro is a tiny
concept with a huge positive impact, so I
use the word 'tiny' because our core
idea is really a simple one.
Basically we sell hand printed cotton
T-shirt as you know so many
entrepreneurs doing the same thing but
our specialty is we use artworks of
disabled people on our product and we
help them to generate regular income so
sixty percent of our profit directly
goes to our disabled artist and not only
this financial benefit but also it
helped them to build and increase
their self-esteem as well so our brand
is all about ethical fashion I would say.
We not only focused
on the sustainability of the fashion
products but also the production,
procedure, materials and
the design and the printing method. We
started this last April and at the
moment one artist is working with us. And we
selected him from Tallinn Mental Health
Centre Lasnamae.
Okay, once we had a chance to visit
Tallinn Mental Health Centre in Lasnamae
and also we got to know about their art
sessions which they organize to their
mentally disabled clients. And after that
on the second day, we also went to the
art sessions and we spent a whole day
with them. After that, we decided to
select some artists from this session.
This actually, we were planning to do
this project with the disabled children
not really the elder disabled people but
after this visit, we realized the actual
difficulty of being disabled and jobless.
So we thought that it would be more
impactful if we give chances to this
disabled elderly people. So then now as I
mentioned to you earlier, we are currently
working with one artist who is suffering
from color blindness and also he has
some health issues related his mental
health and especially I want to mention
that this Tallinn Mental Health Centre in Estonia, they helped us a lot to maintain
our relationship with this artist.
Why should people buy your product and
not from others? We are in the
middle of a huge competition, but when it
comes to the impact, we are unique
Because if you buy LOOMRO's products you will directly help differently abled people
and it creates regular income for them
and also you can buy best quality
product from LOOMRO in terms of material quality. We thoroughly believe that
people must use long lasting
garment with excellent material
quality because it's good for your
health and also it protects the
environment.
So we are using organic cotton which is
100% eco-friendly and we buy those
garments from certified traditional
manufacturers in Bangladesh and also we
use eco-friendly hand printing method to
print the design on the T-shirt. I can
say that LOOMRO's products are suitable
for any skin type and even three years
old child to 100 years old elderly can use this
product. So LOOMRO is for kind-hearted
people who love simple but quality
products and also people who believe in
Zero Carbon footprint.
How do you plan to reach this group of
people? Currently we are trying to do
marketing through our Facebook Page and webpage.
Still, we're planning more strategies to do our marketing
We try to reach out to them and
then I think they can help us to find
our customers. And actual customers.
What is the most rewarding learning of this journey from ideation to the fulfilment
of this product, to the hands of your
customers? So at the starting point of
our business, we
are worried that we are not experienced
enough and we are not
good enough to succeed but after
we started, selling from our very
first sale, we learned that we would
never be hundred percent ready to start
a business because the best way to learn
something is to throw yourself right
into action, so I would say the best
thing we learned from our journey is:
there are different type of customers so
we have to face them and they have
different type of requirements and also
to win a business or doing a social
enterprise is not an easy task and there
is no comfort zone and risk is always
there, so no matter what we have to work
on our idea continuously
There are so many obstacles so we have
to change our strategies and try out new
things somehow we have to continue. We are still, we are changing our
strategies and try to find out the most
suitable (I mean) best fit strategy for
our business and still we are very young
company, not company, very young project
and still like six months, so still we
are trying to find out new things but we
learnt that no there are some people who
really love to help people and they
really love the simple but quality
clothes. Social responsibility is an
ethical framework and suggest that an
entity, be it an organization or
individual has an obligation to act for
the benefit of society at large. How do
you think it resonates with LOOMRO's work?
LOOMRO is not a single social enterprise
enterprise. I like to define it as a
chain of social enterprises because we
help traditional Bangladeshi organic
cotton manufacturers and on the other
hand we help disabled people
and we are working with the Tallinn
Mental Health Centre, so we are trying to be socially responsible in many ways.
Our customers also directly or
indirectly become socially responsible
by using our product and also we try to balance, the
ecosystem and the economy and ultimately
I would like to mention that by
supporting and promoting small and
medium enterprises, we can uphold our
commitment to the socially responsible
modern economy. I'd like to Thank you
for inviting me for this interview and I
would like to invite all the members of
this network, please visit our web page
and FB page. Please comment and please
follow us and if you like our products
please buy your next (LOOMRO) T-shirt from
our web store, Thank you! 
Thank you so much, Dilanka.
