Sophie Martin's French chic is in the bag

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!"