Sophie Martin's French chic is in the bag

David Kennedy, Contributor, Jakarta, d_kenn@yahoo.com

If you visit Hero supermarket on Jl. Gatot Subroto in Central Jakarta, take a look on the third floor. On just about any day of the week, you will witness scenes of frenetic activity as slips of paper quickly change hands and orders are called across the shop floor in a manner reminiscent of a stock exchange.

The cause of the commotion is trade in Sophie Martin handbags and fashion accessories. Since 1996, over half a million Indonesians have joined this direct selling network and 160 sales outlets have been opened across the country by independent agents keen to make money from the lucrative French trademark.

The Sophie Martin brand has grown from a small home business selling 10 or 15 handbags a week to a household name in the country, with sales of 10,000 bags a day from Aceh to Papua. Partly by employing a clever system of "multilevel marketing" -- membership in the network costs Rp 30,000 and entitles clients to a 30 percent discount on catalog prices -- Sophie Martin has become the leading local producer of handbags.

But what is it that makes these bags sell like, well, hotcakes?

"We have nice, fashionable designs and the bags are good value," Sophie Martin told The Jakarta Post recently.

"Here, all women love brands. But there are two categories of women basically: those who love Louis Vuitton, Chanel and so on and can afford to buy them, and others who also like brands and buy these kinds of bags because they recognize the name and maybe because it's French."

Martin has made quite a name for herself among handbag aficionados in Jakarta. Rumors about her identity are rife, ranging from tales of an illustrious career on the catwalks of Paris and Milan to stories of how she lives in Paris and regularly brushes shoulders with Yves Saint Laurent and Jean Paul Gaultier.

Though it is unlikely that low-priced Sophie Martin bags would be sold in the same Parisian street as designer labels, none of these rumors have done the brand recognition any harm. Sophie Martin's husband, Bruno Hasson, takes obvious pleasure in pointing out marketing surveys which suggest that more people in this country have heard of Sophie Martin than Louis Vuitton.

Martin, 34, laughed heartily when told about her glamorous reputation, occasionally interjecting in French with "c'est vrai?" (is that so) or an "ah bon!" (it's great). There is no doubting her "Frenchness" -- she looks very French, with an attendant style and charm. Her image has undoubtedly been a factor which has played no small part in raising the popularity of her brand name.

The success of her name has even led to one manufacturer naming a street after her in South Jakarta.

With a characteristic Gallic shrug of the shoulders, and a nonplused expression, Sophie Martin casually brushed aside talk of fame and explained that while she lends her name to the brand and her face appears on the catalogs she does not actually run the business or even formally work in it.

Her husband takes care of marketing and directing the business with an Indonesian partner while she gives advice on designs and fashion trends. Nonetheless, she is central to the brand, not only in name but also as the cover girl, adding Parisian style and panache to a range of low cost fashion accessories which now include T-shirts, costume jewelry and underwear.

A "trailing spouse", she decided to do something constructive with her time when she joined her husband, a businessman, in Jakarta in 1996.

Making handbags was a natural choice as her father had a handbag store in the trendy St Germain Des Pres district of Paris. After graduating in fine arts from the prestigious Academie Des Beaux Art in Paris in 1994, she worked for him doing a job that many young women would dream of -- choosing and buying fashion accessories. She met her husband when she bought a leather wallet from him at a Paris trade show.

"I grew up with handbags. Since I was small I worked with my father and I thought, well, it's nice to do this business but selling something already made is not so nice. It's better if you can decide your own materials and designs. I thought I'd make them at home and at least I should be able to sell them to my father," she said.

Her label began eight years ago almost as a hobby in her living room in Cipete, South Jakarta. Her husband worked as a sales agent for French companies exporting industrial goods to Indonesia and regularly entertained clients at home. This gave Martin a "captive market" to test her bags on.

Very soon demand for her homemade bags largely surpassed her husband's imported goods, making the title of "trailing spouse" appear somewhat superfluous as her husband began to work full time on developing her idea.

"At this time Bruno had wanted to set up a direct selling business. He thought about cosmetics but bags seemed a better idea," she said, adding that he chose direct selling because of its capacity to expand the business and due to the lack of stores to sell in.

"Also, often the sellers in the big department stores wanted us to change things, often minor things."

With the help of an Indonesian business partner, Hasson began mass producing and selling his wife's bags and later sub- contracted the production process -- giving him the freedom to concentrate on the concept, design and branding of the products.

The economic crisis that struck beginning in the late 1990s helped them carve out a place in the Indonesian market as demand for cheaper locally produced handbags soared when imports became too expensive.

It's almost with a sense of disbelief that Martin recalls the time when demand for her label first began to rocket. She described a scene not unlike an episode of the TV series Sex and the City, when women followed her in search of her latest creation.

"Even when I came to the office with one new bag from the factory, women would call out to me, 'please Ibu Sophie, give this one to us'."

Apart from being at the right place at the right time, Martin attributes the success of her brand to a combination of fashion and pragmatism.

When asked why handbags are so important to women, Martin answers with a refreshing lack of marketing spin.

"It's a way of transporting things that they need to have with them and that they use ten times a day". She gets inspiration in the street, in shopping malls and during twice yearly trips home to Paris.

But, despite the "Sophie Martin Paris" label, her bags are tailored to the Indonesian and Asian markets.

"I get inspiration from new fashions when I am in Paris but we adjust them for here. For example, we cannot have open bags as so many people take the bus. We have to put zippers and use more waterproof materials for the rainy season," she explained.

With a new shop recently opened in the Philippines and plans to expand the business further in this country and beyond, Sophie Martin and her husband seem set to stay here for some time. Although you could not accuse her of going native, the French designer certainly seems to be at home here.

"There is something here that in Europe you don't have. People have the, how do you say... joie de vivre (joy of living)?" she intoned, her accent becoming more pronounced as the conversation drew to a close and her thoughts moved on to other things. "Because in Europe now everybody is complaining about everything, and they have everything."

The fact that everyone here seems to want her handbags is certainly an enticement to keep doing what she does. So what new styles can we expect to see later this season?

"Well I cannot really tell you, except maybe the colors...," she said, at which point, she exchanged glances with her husband.

Wearing a shrewd business smile I had not noticed before, she continued, "Sorry, but it's a trade secret!"