In #TheMilestone series, TFR interviewed brands about their journey from the very beginning. This series meant to give insight to readers how a brand or company is built from zero. It also highlights the importance of process.

Founded in 2015 by Raditya Puspoyo (Radit), Zinnia Zubaida (Zizi), and Damita Almira (Ami), Delapan Batik brings a modern twist to Batik while preserving the heritage and techniques. The clever use of prints and colours speaks to the youth without losing the Indonesian identity. This week, TFR talked to Radit about building Delapan Batik and the struggle to preserve Indonesia heritage.

TFR: How did you meet and whose idea was it to create Batik?

Radit Puspoyo (RP): Zizi used to be a stylist for fashion magazine. I was her assistant. She’s like my sibling. We haven’t met for a long time. When we met, she came up with the idea of creating Batik because public perception of Batik has changed. UNESCO stated that Batik is a heritage that must be preserved, but what people don’t know is that it is the process of Batik making that UNESCO preserves. Printing out Batik prints is not Batik.

I used to run a fashion brand. My background is graphic design. I feel that with my skills as graphic designers it would be cool to come up with different types of prints while implementing the Batik-making process. I teamed up with Zizi and we recruited Ami as co-founder to help with sales.

TFR: Tell us about your technique and process. How long does it take?

RP: We use stamp for our Batik. We dye the fabric naturally. We also let it dry naturally. Hence, there’s limitation on how much we can produce. We can only produce 4 metres of fabric from this process. The colour could turn out different if we let it dry longer or quicker. Through our products, we try to educate the public about Batik. We’re not just making quick bucks. We want to preserve Batik. However, before you preserve it, you need to know the techniques and process of creating it.

Creating a collection takes around 3 to 4 months from sampling to dying and designing prints. This is certainly not fast fashion. It’s even longer before we launched. It took us around a year to develop our brand, design fabric, and make sample. Actually, we needed a whole year to plan our collection for the following year.

Our brand name used to be ‘Delapan’ only but people kept on asking what we are making and why it is so expensive. We have to explain that this is Batik and it is not printed.

TFR: What’s your expectation for this brand?

RP: If you want to create a brand, don’t expect to reach profitability in 2 to 3 years. The big brands you hear and see right now need 5 years to breakeven. Some even need 8 to 10 years. Then you can say your brand has already settled. 

TFR: How do you market your brand in the beginning to this day?

RP: To be honest, we only began using influencer marketing in second year. We promote our brand mouth-to-mouth via WhatsApp. I’ve already established good relationship with The Goods Dept through the brands I worked on, so I used that as our golden ticket into the retailer. We hired social media manager in our second year because we realised how important social media is. People treat Instagram as the brand’s website. Our social media manager will update and inform us when and what to post. A Korean came by our pop-up booth yesterday and told us he found Delapan on Instagram. We saw a huge bump from 200 followers in 2015 to more than 1,000 followers in the following year. They are our loyal customers who are actively asking about products. I’d say 80% of our followers is repeat customer. They have seen our brand at The Goods Dept and they have spotted us on pop-up events. That is why they are confident to make purchase through Instagram. 

We started very small in the first year because I was still running my own brand. I had to work it out. At the beginning, we only invested Rp15,000,000 in Delapan. It grew significantly after a year, and I decided to fully concentrate on Delapan Batik. I feel like Delapan’s concept is really unique while the brand I worked on is already common.

TFR: Did you encounter any challenge?

RP: When I showed my dad Delapan’s first collection, he asked me, “Are you sure about this? Don’t you usually sell cheaper clothes?” He told me he’s not sure with the brand because of the price tag. He even said that he would not invest in the brand because he wasn’t sure it would work.

Our first collection sold out. The second collection was also doing well. Our year-on-year growth was around 25%. After that, we all decided to take this brand seriously. This year, the demand is increasing and like any other brand out there we are afraid that we can’t meet the demand.

TFR: Any plans to expand the product offerings?

RP: We are making scarf. We are adding more prints on our latest collection. In retail, we use the terms ‘core’ and ‘icing’. Core is something that you can sell all year long while icing is seasonal item. We are applying that because we want to use the fast fashion strategy. Our core will be the pineapple prints and our icing will be spring/summer and fall/winter prints.

Whatever we plan on making, there’s 1 principle that we hold onto tight: We will never use digital printing. We’ve been fighting for our mission for three years and we don’t want to throw that away just because we want to please the crowd with more affordable line.

Starting a Batik brand with digital prints is a lucrative business. It is affordable, unlike Delapan where we are limited to 4 metres of fabric.

TFR: What’s the current stance of the Batik industry?

RP: Batik export to Japan has been plunging over the past 5 years. There are so many brands out there that sell digitally printed Batik. It’s sad to see that. When I went to a wholesale fabric market, I saw rolls of digitally printed Batik. They are probably around Rp80,000 per metre. Can you image how sad I am? When I looked around, people happily bought those fabric. For them it’s still Batik but it makes me want to spread the message out. Even the older generation nowadays prefer digitally printed Batik than real Batik.

There’s also a drop in number of artisans. The youth choose to move to the city to find jobs and the middle-aged villagers prefer farming. Most of weaving and Batik artisans are very old. If we are really concerned about our heritage, we need to figure out who’s going to continue the work. It’s part of our responsibility too. We know it’ll be a struggle since the beginning, but Delapan has a greater purpose than just selling.

TFR: What is your vision for Delapan Batik?

RP: 60% of our buyers are foreigners. We hope to increase the awareness among locals. We also want to turn Delapan Batik into a big company that implements slow fashion concept.