KAMPOENG DJAHIT (KDJ): A digital platform approach to accelerate fashion industry in micro, small, medium enterprises in Indonesia

Abstraksi

Cileungsi and Bekasi, located in Jawa Barat, are the industrial areas in Jabodetabek (Jakarta, Bogor, Depok, Tangerang, and Bekasi). Cielungsi has a population of about 347.414 people (Bogor Central Bureau of Statistic, 2017). Bekasi (Bantar Gebang and Bekasi Barat) is inhabited by 418.400 people (Bekasi Central Bureau of Statistics, 2016). Both areas are filled with many industrial factories, e.g. foods and drink, fashion, leather, furniture, paper and publisher, mining, metal, and so forth. It’s not surprising that most of the populations are factory workers. In recent years, the garment factories in Cileungsi and Bekasi faced many problems, including financial distress and labor supply. The government raises the minimum wages rates continuously. They could no longer exist there, accordingly, there were laid off for workers during years. They moved their factory sites into other areas, such as in Jawa Tengah. The consequence was the rising number of unemployment. The unemployment workers or ex-workers from the garment factory started to open their own businesses in micro, small or medium enterprises. The new fashion enterprises need help to increase their capacity of production as well as their market penetration. Fashion is a promising industry in Indonesia. According to the report made by Indonesian Textile Association (API), textile, garment and shoe industry have been developed since the 1970s in Indonesia and have become the most significant contribution the country’s economic growth. Therefore, we conducted research in lately 2018, to explore the potential problems of fashion enterprises and how to recommend government and practitioners to improve both capacities of production and market share. This study is an exploratory research to address the research problems; these are to identify the condition and characteristics of the fashion enterprises, to identify the development requirement to increase their quality, to analyze the coaching and monitoring planning for the enterprises and to recommend both the government and practitioners about how to accelerate the development program for the enterprises. We recruited under-graduated students as research assistants, from a university in Jawa Barat to conduct the research for about a month. The research was originally in qualitative design, due to restricted literature in this area of research. We used semi-structured interviews to collect the data from fashion enterprises in Cileungsi and Bekasi. There were 45 fashion enterprises that have a positive response to the research. Nevertheless, not all the fashion enterprises in Cileungsi and Bekasi wanted to participate as informants. Based on the data, most enterprises were run by themselves as the owners (69%). They just run as microenterprises with 1-3 employees for each (73 %). They are still having a lower educational level that almost 33 % graduated from elementary school. The reasons of doing this enterprise are the flexibility in doing the business from home (10%), to acquire living’s needs (7%), and to fill the spare time (5%). Their incomes varied from about 1 million to 120 million per month. Their skills differ, some can sew all types of clothes, some just sew the skirt, blouse, etc. Further, we also asked them about the development requirements such as their preferences in the training program. The skills that should be improved in training such as cutting, embroidery technique, design and style, business development, a new technique in making clothes, and etc. Their quality maintenance in production is varied among the enterprises, but most of them knew that quality is driven by customers. And finally, it can be concluded that the development program is an urge that must be done. The coaching and monitoring program, as well as the development program, is crucial for fashion enterprises. They are still lacking in many skills to produce fashion efficiently, due to restricted access to training in making clothes. Their production capacity still low, which two-thirds is 60-90 pieces clothes per month (34%), only 5 % that produce 1000-2000 pieces per month and the rest are varied in production capacities. Despite this, the enterprises have problems with machinery; many don’t have the machine to produce clothes. The payment methods used in processing orders may cause problems because they sometimes receive total payment after all the clothes have been finished. They sometimes have the problem of collecting the order payment from customers. Despite the down payment methods can help to minimize the problems. Many of them are also still complaining that they faced problems to get the total amount after production completed. They can’t handle this problem because the orders come from a large factory or from their past factories before they started opening their own business. These results imply for practitioners, and government, about how to make a development program that can help them to solve the problems. In essence, the program must support the fashion enterprises with skill development program to increase the production capacity, continuity in production and gain more access in the large market. This research recommends that the development program, not just simply as a coaching and monitoring program to give them an additional skill, or additional money to fund their business, but a program that gives them more opportunities to gain access for the larger market. They need more customers, more stable payment methods, and more secure order processes. Responding to the digital business today, this research recommends developing an application, an approach to digitalize the order-processing from customers. This application can gain in a larger market, wherever and whenever. Kampoeng Djahit application (Kdj) is a fashion ordered application that connects the customers from over the world to the fashion enterprises that can supply what the customers’ needs. This application is built under big-data processing, therefore it can be leveraged to other areas of fashion enterprises in Indonesia. This application will benefit the customers in an easy way to order the custom designed fashion.