"Streetlights Are A Luxury": A Belarusian Woman Shares Her Unusual Business Idea

And this idea works.

A Belarusian woman mertsai_by creates designer flickers. She was inspired to pursue this idea by problems with lighting.

“I live in Belarus, in a small village where streetlights are a luxury,” she writes. “Where 16 hours in winter means 16 hours of darkness. Our preschool is in the neighboring village, and the children get there by bus. For years, I accompanied the children to preschool and rode home on a regular scooter, wearing a vest so I wouldn’t get run over by a truck. I sent the kids to school wearing vests. And then suddenly I decided that since I’d been a clothing designer for so many years, I had no right not to do something about the situation with reflectors.

So I started sewing reflectors. I sewed the first couple almost by accident, when I couldn’t bring myself to buy the kids a light green smiley-face vest for a whole week. The school required a reflector, but my older daughter had already refused to wear a vest.

I sewed the first two. I found some fabric, sewed a few more, then some more, and more, and more. Now I have over 60 reflector designs, and new ones are added regularly. There are reflectors for shoes, brooches, accessories, and simple pendants.

Many users responded to the post and wanted to buy these unusual flickers. The website Charter97.org shares some of the comments:

- Great topic, by the way. The dark season is starting, and everyone definitely needs reflectors—especially kids, of course, who, no matter how much you teach them, still run across the street however they want and walk around without noticing anything around them.

- Cool! But there are no dinosaurs. Can you expand the selection?

- The reflectors are great, but as a driver, I sincerely hope you continue to wear a high-visibility vest when driving on unlit roads at night and teach your children to do the same. Reflective strips on clothing work better, and the reflector is small—it can get tucked away, and people forget to move it from one bag to another.

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