Category: Opinion

Indonesia Fashion E-Commerce, Will it Bloom?

Two days in a row, on Wednesday and Thursday, two fashion e-commerce stores are launched in Indonesia. On Wednesday, Suitmedia launched Scallope while PT. M3 Indonedia launched Laavaa on Thursday. Both fashion e-commerce enliven the competition of fashion e-commerce.

Previously, there are already BelowCepek, LocalBrand,  Zalora, FimelaShop and Ratimaya on the market. Although specializing and targeting in different market, surely there are cross-sections of those who play in this field.

As reported in the press release, Scallope mentions that it provides various fashion products from leading young designers in Indonesia. Scallope is trying to answer the public’s need of modern, authentic, high quality and affordable Indonesian fashion product. With such product, Scallope’s target market is 16-35 years old male and female, student, employee and manager.

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How to Approach Social Media… Like a Boss

There is no shortage of social media “experts” in Indonesia ready to take your money with a one-page plan with a bunch of ideas that focus on “buzzers” and “community-building” with not much else.

Social media as a marketing channel at its apex is probably about buzz. However, buzz itself can be elusive and something that can’t be guaranteed. Focusing on it will distract you from the main reason you’re considering social media as a marketing channel in the first place – Return on Investment.

Whether you’re building an internal team or outsourcing to an agency you need to think through your options and know enough to intelligibly tell between contenders and pretenders. Below are some of my thoughts.

(Take it, it’s FREE!)

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[Music Monday] The Darker Side Of Digital Music And Why iTunes Store Dropped Indonesia

Many people are not aware the complex structure that sits in what is vaguely known as “the music industry”. For many people, what is seen through the media is the musician, artist or songwriter (albeit not as often), and sometimes a mild mention of the music label here, a record producer there, and sometimes the supporting musicians of  a certain album. But actually, a clockwork between songwriters, publishers, record producers, music labels, distribution channels, artists, and countless other people and bodies are involved in an intricate (and often confusing) dance. So, what happens if that clockwork breaks down?

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Will Navicula Crowdfunding Effort be Successful?

Navicula, a band from Bali, is raising fund through Kickstarter. Through a project named “Golden Green Grunge for Rare Red Apes: Navicula Borneo Tour”, this band is hoping to get funding in the amount of USD3,000. When raised, the money will be used to fund their tour project to Borneo.

Navicula is what they call psychedelic grudge band. They made a lot of songs with environment theme such river pollution (Kali Mati), pollution in Jakarta (Metropolutan), and a song about Orang Utan (Orang Utan). By holding a tour to Borneo, Navicula hopes to raise the public’s awareness about environment issue especially Orang Utan, directly to the Orang Utan’s habitat.

Until today, 25 days to the deadline of the fundraising, Navicula could only raise support from 30 people with total fund of USD 1,096. For those supporters, Navicula offers reward in the form of their songs, Navicula CD album, Orang Utan shirt until private concert.

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[Dailyssimo] Return of Investment in Social Media

If you read my article about the KPI of social media it is closely related to what we know as ROI (Return Of Investment). There has to be a clear benchmark to count ROI, so KPI is the benchmark for ROI.

Many say that ROI in social media is unmeasureable but can be tracked, others say that social media’s ROI is noticeable when the level of customer’s satisfaction moves up due to the activity of online community. And there are many more explanations about ROI in social media.

While those answers come up, the thing that can be confusing and convincing at the same time is you will still find it difficult to answer the questions from your business partner or client who demands answers in a reasonable business perspective.

Those are the things that sometimes make us sceptical about social media, things that seem to have no clarity in structure and flow. Why you should look for something that was not even measureable? And how do you track and collect the data with the right tool? How can you control the mistakes that often happen? How to articulate the business cases for social media?

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[Music Monday] Revisiting Indonesia’s Copyright Law

Indonesia is a democratic country, at least by principle. Well, at least, the word “democratic” doesn’t come with quote marks anymore, as it did during the time of the New Order. Now, a democracy will either vote or discuss on everything, or appoint representatives to do all the voting and discussing, and thus deciding on whatever is going to be enacted into law, to be followed and safeguarded by the executive branch (just to remind you, this means the President and his government). Now what does this have to do with the digital music business? The law, that’s what.

Being basically a content-based business, the music industry is highly influenced by copyright laws – how the government sees the issue regarding copyright and how it thinks it is best implemented. And of the million things that need regulation in the country, Indonesia’s most recent copyright law was signed into law in 2002, under President Megawati Soekarnoputri. Albeit according to some still lacking in some areas, the upgraded legislation added some much-needed law protection for works of cinematography to computer programs, as the earlier version of the copyright law was signed into law in 1979.

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Foxconn Will Build Factory in Indonesia, What’s In It for Us?

Several media have reported that Foxconn will build a factory in Indonesia. As reported by Antara, the confirmation is disclosed by the Minister of Industries, MS Hidayat who states that the agreement has been signed when the Minister of Trade, Gita Wirjawan visited Taiwan some time ago.

Foxconn will build a factory worth USD1 billion of investment and expected to be able to employ up to 1 million work forces. Although Foxconn is hoping to build a factory in Central Java or East Java region, the government is pushing the location to outside Java by offering some tax incentives. The feasibility study for this factory can take a year.

Foxconn is known as one of the biggest electronic manufacturing companies in the world. Under the official label Hon Hai Precision Industry, Foxconn’s headquarter is in Taiwan and has many factories in some continents. Foxconn’s biggest (and many) factory is located in China. Foxconn owns 13 factories in China, where one factory employs around 100 thousand to 500 thousand workers. Overall number of Foxconn’s workers in China reaches 1.2 million people. Foxconn is also reported to have several factories in Malaysia even though the scale is not too massive.

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User Uses Telunjuk for Android Smartphone’s Survey

Telunjuk is apparently not only used for comparing cell phone sold online. Smartphone potential user also uses Telunjuk’s service to help them in choosing what kind of smartphone they will buy. This is proven by the data of Telunjuk usage in June 2012.

70% of Telunjuk user which entails operating system in the search parameter puts Android in it. This is done apparently because said Telunjuk user wants to buy Android smartphone, but not sure about the brand and type. They use Telunjuk search result as a consideration.

This is not happening for other operating system because other operating systems are usually related to one brand. For example: BlackBerry OS with BlackBerry, Windows Mobile with Nokia and iOS with Apple. This kind of user who is looking for such smartphone usually directly put the keywords or brand in the search parameter.

After Androif, most searched operating system is the Symbian (9,7%), Windows-based (1,8%) and iOS (1%).

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[Simply Business] Startups That I Would Love to See More in Indonesia

Indonesia is unique, we are a nation comprised of thousands of islands, 70% of us still use feature phones and only about 9% percent of us have credit cards. More than 50% of Indonesians don’t live in cities so it makes sense that smartphone users are only 8.7% among 200 million mobile phone users.

Based on those facts alone, it should be obvious that Indonesia is different. We can’t just blatantly apply the same rules of startups like the Silicon Valley players or carbon copy the successful startups out there. Indonesia needs different or more customized startups, better suited for our unique environment.

Everybody will have their own opinion on this but here’s my version of what startups I would love to see more in Indonesia:

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[Dailyssimo] The Power of Conversation in the Virtual World

The conversation in virtual world usually happens in places that allowd people to post something. We see what is happening in Twitter, Facebook timeline and on the comment box of a blog. Principally, the Web 2.0 introduced by Tim O’Reilly focuses on two way communication, which means every media is designed for conversations.

What do I want to discuss with the title above? It’s related to the power of conversation happening in the process of socializing in the online world which will directly affect the owner of the identity. I once wrote about how a buzzer keeps their ‘asset’, and then I also wrote about how someone can stand out among other personas. The bottom line of those discussions is about the fundamental of a conversation with limitations in the virtual world, which could lead you to a way you’d never imagine if you can’t control it.

Many believe that the appearance of oneself in the virtual world is one’s individual right…. nothing can argue with that. So, when brought to that personal aisle, the responsibility seems insignificant. But the thing with social media or the internet is the world with “open” standard. With that awareness, the option for those who are sensitive to such wide openness is not to use it, so it seems to end in self alienating behavior. Imagine, you’d be surprised if you see someone not using a cell phone nowadays. The world has changed, the behavior changed, standard is shifting. So like it or not, we are suddenly in the pit of social media and internet, together with almost everybody we know.

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