New fashion center aims at style and substance
JAKARTA (JP): The Indotex LaSalle Documentation Center of Indonesian Fashion was inaugurated yesterday to help give local employees the expertise they need to succeed in the textile, garment and fashion industries.
Director General of the Ministry of Trade and Industry Dodi Supardi, who officially inaugurated the center on behalf of the Minister of Trade and Industry Mohamad (Bob) Hasan, said the center would help the nation increase employment in the local textile industry.
The economic crisis has cut a swathe through the formerly booming garment and textile industry, with at least 300,000 workers dismissed in recent months. Businesswoman and designer Poppy Dharsono said the textile sector currently employed 1.2 million workers nationwide.
The documentation center, located at LaSalle International College, Gedung Pusat Niaga, Central Jakarta, houses hundreds of books and journals on fashion, textiles, design and business administration. It also has a Dupont-Lycra Fabric Room of more than 2,000 fabrics and an IBM internet center,
"In these difficult times, we need more local people to enter the textile industry ... we cannot afford expatriates at this point," Dodi said.
"This will not only help students of the LaSalle college, but will help others in the textile, garment and fashion industry to refine their skills in specific areas of the trade."
The college is a partnership between the Indonesian Textile Association, the Canadian-based LaSalle College Group and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).
Poppy Dharsono, a shareholder in the documentation center and LaSalle College, said the four-room center will help in refining the export quality of garments and textiles.
"Even though our exports of textiles and garments are good, we need to improve on the quality and expand on the kinds of local garments, design and textiles that can be exported," Poppy said.
The director general of the Indotex LaSalle College and Documentation Center, Jean Giguere, said hundreds of small and medium enterprises contributed fabrics of about 8,000 motifs for the Dupont-Lycra Fabric Room.
"This will help people who visit the center to get better knowledge of, for instance, a pattern or motif from Sulawesi 300 years ago."
More than 400 members yarn and fabric producers of the Indonesian Textile Association contributed to the fabric Room, according to the director general of the association, Irwandy Muslim Amin.
Following the inauguration, representatives of the Private Enterprise Participation (PEP) Project, a CIDA bilaterally funded project in partnership with the Ministry of Cooperatives and Small Enterprises and the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KADIN), explained how Canadian expertise in technology and management could lend a hand to small and medium enterprises.
Project manager Tim Reynolds said the project helped small and medium enterprises with specifics already set by the Ministry of Cooperatives and Small Enterprises.
"Small ones are those making less than Rp 1 billion in sales annually, and those having less that Rp 200 million in assets. Medium enterprises are those making less than Rp 5 billion in sales," Reynolds said.
Assistant project manager Mariana Soengkono said help would be extended in technical and training assistance, not funds.
"We can give seminars on management and marketing strategies at an ailing company and also, for instance, detailed help with the accounting department," she said.
"We could also give one-on-one individual training." (ylt)