Yuke entices customers with doves

Yuke entices customers with doves

Kanis Dursin, The Jakarta Post

Most people would think of birds, particularly white doves, as
symbols of peace, but for Yuke E. Susiloputro, president director
of PT Lippo Cikarang Tbk, the birds led to a thriving property
business.

Back in 1994, PT Lippo Cikarang launched its maiden house
units in Cikarang, Bekasi, West Java. While people rushed to buy
the units, Yuke noticed that only a handful actually occupied
them.

"We bought some 5,000 birds of various kinds and released them
in the compound," said Yuke, who joined the Lippo Group in 1992,
immediately after he returned from the United States, where he
studied and worked for 14 years.

"Up until now we have so many birds here -- chirping," said
the husband of Kiki Susiloputro, who is director of Lippo
Cikarang's Water Boom, a major attraction in Bekasi.

The trick worked wonders for Yuke, who designed the housing
and industrial complex. Around 7,000 families now live in Lippo
Cikarang, which has rapidly developed from a ghost village into a
bustling, self-sustaining town.

Birds, however, were just one of a wide range of incentives
Lippo Cikarang devised to attract consumers to buy a house and
stay there. Yuke said that his company also offers 'after-sales
services' to residents who stay in the complex.

"If their toilets are clogged or roofs leak, they just call us
up and we will come within 10 minutes to fix them. Also if their
telephone lines are not working or if they have electricity
problems, they can just call us and we will report to Telkom and
PLN. We attend to their complaints immediately," said the father
of eight-year-old Raka Susiloputro and Arka Susiloputro, six
years.

On top of that, security is very tight in the compound. House
units are built in clusters according to their types and each
cluster has its own security guards. "We want the residents to
really feel safe living here," said Yuke, who won an
international house design competition organized by the American
Institute of Architecture in 1986.

It is no surprise, therefore, that Lippo Cikarang has
continued to attract people to stay there. Currently, there are
some 30,000 people of the middle-income group and middle to low-
income group, including some 400 foreigners, living in over 7,000
houses in the complex.

Born in Surabaya, East Java in 1959, Yuke grew up in Kudus,
East Java, where he finished senior high school. After finishing
school, Yuke was sent him to the United States in 1978 to enroll
in a medical school there.

"I took up medicine because my father wanted me to become a
doctor. But, I did not really study. I did my exams in five
minutes and than left the classroom. Luckily, I passed the exams,
although my grades were mostly Ds, the passing grade," said Yuke,
whose father was also a medical doctor.

In 1982, however, Yuke, the only child in the family, rebelled
against his father and quit medical school. In 1983 he enrolled
at the Southern California Institute of Architecture, the only
architecture school in California that specializes in design.

Yuke, who was given an ultimatum by his father to finish his
studies as soon as possible or stand on his own, studied very
hard. He went to the school's library virtually every day to
study.

"I completed a five-year program in three years. I took 24
units every semester. One time, the school summoned me and told
me that I could not take 24 units per semester. I argued that I
had passed all the exams. So, since then the school allows
students to take up to 24 units per semester if they want," he
recalled.

The key to his academic success, according to Yuke, was
teamwork. "I had two close friends, one from Iran and the other
from Lebanon. We always studied together. Each of us was assigned
to study certain subjects only and when examinations came, we
would share what we had studied with the other two. We were so
close that our classmates called us the three musketeers," he
recalled.

Upon completing his bachelor's degree, Yuke got a two-year
scholarship from NASA for his master's degree. It was then that
Yuke won an international house design competition organized by
the American Institute of Architecture in 1986.

"I did not really intend to join the competition, but my
professor secretly submitted by design, which was my thesis, to
the organizing committee. All of a sudden news about me winning
the competition appeared in newspapers with my picture. People
called me to congratulate me, but I was confused as I did not
know what was happening. Only then my professor told me that he
had submitted my design," he said, adding that the design that
won the competition was a space module which NASA still uses
until now.

Upon graduating in 1986, Yuke and his two friends set up a
firm in the United States. The company, however, did not last as
his two friends returned to their countries shortly after.

Yuke, who reads architecture books and draws in his free time,
returned to Indonesia in 1992 and joined the Lippo Group as the
chief planner of the Lippo Cikarang residential and industrial
compound.

Looking to the future plans, Yuke said Lippo Cikarang wanted
to develop a better quality housing complex.

"We foresee the future is very good. We have developed housing
complexes for the middle income and middle to low income market.
Now, it's time to build houses for the middle and middle to upper
income groups. The infrastructure must be good. The landscaping
and building must be better than what we have now and the
clusters must be smaller, but the houses bigger," he said.