Handicraft business loses prime, lucrative market

Singgir Kartana, Contributor, Yogyakarta

At nine in the morning Pariyah's house in Pocung village, Bantul is usually buzzing with activities of craftsmen who are busy creating wooden statues for souvenirs. But today, it is dead quiet.

It has been like this for a week now.

"Since the bomb blast in Bali, we are not receiving hardly any orders. Even previously ordered statues are still here," said the workshop's owner Pariyah.

In the house's living room, hundreds of statues of various sizes are piled high, scattered on the floor while others are already neatly packed in boxes.

The bomb blast did not only take the lives of innocent victims, but it has also sent Yogyakarta's handicraft business into a precipitous tailspin.

For Pariyah, who has been in the business for three years, Bali is her prime market with 90 percent of her crafts delivered to the island. But with the bombing, buyers, who usually order from her, have been difficult to contact and if she finally does reach them, they refuse delivery for fear of no customers -- mostly tourists, buying their products. The tragedy has already cost her over Rp 10 million, and there is no sign that it will get better any time soon.

With the huge slowdown, her 23 workers are close to losing their jobs.

Pariyah is only one of dozens of handicraft business owners in the village, known as the center of statue-making, who are all now being adversely affected by the Bali terror strikes. In addition to this village, many other craftsmen in other places in Yogyakarta were also badly hit by the bombing.

Craftsmen in Kampung Krebet, Bantul -- a place which in the last five years has garnered a reputation as a center for batik- themed souvenirs, is also feeling the impact of the bombs.

Handicraft business owner Kemiskidi complained that apart from low orders, she had problems collecting payments. Her previous order worth Rp 9 million was still in her house, waiting to be collected and paid for. "I don't know when the crafts will be collected," she sighed.

Another businessman, Surojo, 48, suggested that he would have to find another line of business soon.

Before the tragedy, he could earn between Rp 4 million and Rp 5 million a week by delivering his products to Bali. These days, he has to rely solely on Yogyakarta's ever-fading market, which accounted for of only 5 percent of his usual monthly turnover before the terrorists struck.

So far, Surojo has no plans to seek a new market. "It is not easy to get a new market," he said.

Widiyanto, a ceramic maker from Turi in Bantul, now can only pay his 22 workers on a part-time basis. In the last two weeks, he had received no orders at all while previously, he got monthly orders of up to Rp 15 million from Bali.

"I hope the situation will get better soon," said the man who, at this point, had no plan to completely lay off his workers.

A small time businessman Mulyadi, 40, faces an even worse situation.

Starting up his business only two months ago with Rp 10 million of investment, he had earned almost Rp 25 million a month in his first two months from producing various wooden souvenirs. But the bomb blasts dashed his dream to expand his business since most, about 90 percent, of his products were delivered to Bali.

Just a week before the Oct. 12 bombing, Mulyadi had received an order of 600 souvenir items worth some Rp 15 million. But after the blast, the buyer canceled the order.

This is the silent killer behind such terror attacks, as hits the small time craftsmen like Pariyah, Widiyanto, Mulyadi very hard, since, unlike established business owners who export their products abroad, they rely more on local markets and cannot do much but simply wait for the situation to return back to normal.

Larger handicraft business owners believed the impact would be increasingly felt a month afterwards.

"Now, the impact is not quite felt as its magnitude will be known only about a month later," said Yon Paidi, owner of Hasta Indah Craft in Imogiri Barat street.

According to Dewi Susilowati, executive director of the Indonesian Association of Small-Scale Industry Handicraftsmen (APIKRI), there are 176 small-scale handicraftsmen, groups or individuals, in Yogyakarta. The association helps market their products with 80 percent of the products exported while the remaining 20 percent are sold locally, including Bali.

The association's souvenir sales records showed the declining sales volume, both locally and abroad. This year the decline reached 7 percent of Rp 2 billion turnover. Sales plummeted following the terrorism in the U.S. on Sept. 11 last year. Although the impact of the Bali blast is yet to be fully felt, Dewi said, the impact would really hit them all hard in a month.

"That's why we are now exploring the possibility of expanding our foreign (export) market. This week, we held a meeting to prepare ourselves for the market's development," Dewi said.