The craft was never the problem

A weaver in Talagune can spend eleven days on a saree and sell it to a passing van for a third of what it fetches in a Colombo hotel gift shop. Nothing about that is a problem of skill.

It's a problem of distance — between the person who makes a thing and the person who wants it. Every step in between takes a cut, and the maker, who has the least leverage, absorbs the difference.

Marketplaces were supposed to fix this. Most of the international ones can't actually pay a Sri Lankan seller: they need a bank account in a country the artisan doesn't live in, or a card processor that won't onboard Sri Lankan businesses at all. So the maker stays on WhatsApp, screenshotting bank slips.

So we started from the payment, not the pretty part

Ceylona is built around a gateway that works here. Buyers pay with the cards and wallets they already have — Visa, Mastercard, eZ Cash, mCash — or by bank transfer, or in cash to the courier. Money settles in rupees, and makers are paid to a local bank account once the parcel has arrived. No foreign entity, no waiting six weeks.

Everything else follows from that. Because we know exactly what each order is worth and who made it, we can publish the split: 87 cents in every rupee goes to the maker. We can name the artisan on every listing. We can tell you a mask took five weeks and that the eyes are carved last.

What we won't do

We won't list imported goods dressed up as local craft. We won't run a sale using a maker's margin without asking them first. And we won't hide who made something behind a brand name — if you can't see a person and a district on a listing, it doesn't belong here.

Who we are

Ceylona is built and operated by oneDesigns, a studio in California whose other products — Handora, CakeNest, DCareTree — all serve the United States. Ceylona is the one built for Sri Lanka, by people with roots there.

Our first marketplace, Handora, taught us an important lesson. The craft was there, the makers were ready, and people wanted to buy — but the systems behind international marketplaces did not work for Sri Lankan sellers. Payment processors would not support the business, and makers were left relying on informal, time-consuming ways to receive money.

Ceylona was created as a response to that experience. From the beginning it has been designed around the realities of selling handmade work in Sri Lanka: local payments, fairer payouts, clear order information, and a direct relationship between makers and customers.

That company is being registered in Sri Lanka now. Once it is, Ceylona will run entirely through Sri Lankan banks — orders in, payouts out, none of it routed through the United States. Until then the marketplace is not taking orders, because a maker should not be paid by a business that does not yet exist on paper.

We believe every handmade piece carries more than its final form. It carries skill, time, place, and the story of the person who made it. Ceylona exists to make those stories easier to discover — and to help ensure the people behind them receive the recognition and value they deserve.

The island has been making beautiful things for two thousand years. It has been getting a bad deal for about four hundred. We're only trying to fix the second one.