Jakarta Great Sale closes without fanfare

Jakarta Great Sale closes without fanfare

Zakki Hakim, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Bargain shoppers will find no impressive discounts for the next
month or so as the Jakarta Great Sale closes without any fanfare.

Or perhaps, they don't really care.

"No, I didn't know that today is the last day of the Jakarta
Great Sale. To be honest, I didn't even know that it was
happening in the first place," Yanti, a shopper at Sogo
department store at the Plaza Indonesia Shopping Center, Central
Jakarta, said on Monday.

Yanti, 42, a mother of two, said that she thought that the
discounts offered by the tenants in the shopping center were made
to coincide with the month-long school holiday.

Another shopper, Silvi, 18, a university student shopping at
Rimo department store in Mal Taman Anggrek, West Jakarta, said
that she did not know that the discounts were part of the sale
campaign launched throughout the city.

"I thought the discounts were offered only at this department
store," she said.

The public was generally unaware that during the Jakarta Great
Sale, they could take advantage of discounts of up to 70 percent
on various items offered by the city's 100 malls, supermarkets,
restaurants, department stores and factory outlets.

The shoppers' unawareness was probably due to poor public
relations about the program, which aimed to turn Jakarta into a
shopping haven on a par with Singapore and Hong Kong. It came to
nothing, as business was as usual.

Kuncahyo, a supervisor at a China ware store in Plaza Senayan,
South Jakarta, told The Jakarta Post that the Great Sale brought
no significant changes to its sales, nor its number of visitors.

"The concept is actually good, but it had no impact on our
business. Business ran like usual and nothing was special," he
said.

If there was an increase in sales, it was probably due to the
school holiday, during which many students and their parents
frequented the malls, shopping or just hanging out.

Dessy Tanumihardja, a public relations officer at Mal Taman
Anggrek, said that the mall recorded a 20 percent increase in the
total number of visitors in the last month because of the school
holidays.

Dessy said the last 30 days coincided with the school
vacation, and students and their parents spent more time at the
mall, shopping for school supplies and other necessities.

"However, the increase was also caused by a number of other
events that we held to lure more visitors to our mall," she said.

She said the number of visitors to the mall reached between
30,000 and 40,000 on workdays and between 70,000 and 80,000 on
weekends.

The chairman of the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and
Industry (Kadin) in Jakarta, Pungky Bambang Purwadi, claimed
earlier that the Great Sale had received financial support from
the Board of Indonesian Culture and Tourism for a television
campaign on CNN.

Pungky said the event, which coincided with Jakarta's 476th
anniversary, also aimed to attract foreign tourists besides local
shoppers.

It was unclear whether the number of foreign shoppers had
increased significantly due to the Great Sale, which was inspired
by the success story of similar events in Singapore, Malaysia and
Hong Kong.

He said that Kadin, which organized the event, targeted at
least Rp 4 trillion (US$487.8 million) in business revenue from
this year's sale.

In comparison, the organizer managed to raise only Rp 3.5
trillion in revenue, lower than its target of Rp 3.7 trillion
last year.

Sri Rahayu, project officer for the Jakarta Great Sale 2003,
told the Post that the organizer had doubled the budget for this
year's event, hoping that it would deliver better results.

She said the results could not be calculated as yet, as the
organizer needed two weeks to gather the sales data from all
participants.

"The result as to whether or not the event was successful will
be announced at the closing ceremony on Aug. 4," she said.

Although the event is unlikely to record a significant
increase in the number of visitors and revenue, several lucky
shoppers will still make a winning, including a grand prize of a
Volvo and 90 Nokia cellular phones, which are to be announced on
Aug. 4.