Hi... and again, “Welcome to Indonesia”

I'd like to share some information with you and also let you get to know me a bit (because if you do business with us, you need to be able to count on me for help). I'm an American with an extensive marketing background. I've been living in Indonesia for a long, long time. (Yes, I'm trying to make you jealous, it's great here!) After all these years of working alongside the Balinese, dealing with the government and handling the multitude of problems that exist doing business in a third world country (or more politely -- a developing country), we've accomplished some amazing things and made a lot of customers outside of Indonesia happy to do business here.

If you don't mind, let me teach you a bit about buying in places like this. For example, Bali. Firstly, there are no organized wholesalers on the island. You can't just call someone up and say 10 of this, 50 of that. No one keeps inventory on Bali; everything is hand-made and after a carver makes it, he sells it -- to a middleman or directly to a company or tourist. The carver usually lives in a village, usually doesn't speak English, and usually asks for a price so high that it requires a couple days of traditional bargaining to bring the price down to a reasonable level.

The correct way to buy is to go into the villages; meet the family that does that kind of carving and, very importantly, the right quality... and start negotiating; come back, look at the sample, give the go-ahead on the order; and come back upon completion (prepared to reject some of the order due to poor quality or mistakes); get the order moved to our warehouse for packing, watch the guys pack the order and address it; check that all government paperwork and shipping documents have been done correctly. And pray that the airplane doesn't take a nose-dive or that the ship doesn't sink.

It doesn't matter how many times we've done business with a carver before, this procedure is followed every time. Most of the time, after we pick up finished product from a carver, we then have to take it to another family whose only job is to re-sand and re-finish carvings that are good, but can be made better with a little bit of extra care.

So, even though products can be bought here relatively inexpensively, the sourcing- manufacturing- buying- quality control- shipping and a host of other small irritants- make the whole thing not as easy as everyone thinks.

This is probably one of the few businesses where the selling is actually a lot easier than the buying. Most people haven't had the luxury of traveling to Bali or Indonesia, but those who have and purchased products for resale, have learned that lesson quite well (and, in fact, use us as an agent for re-ordering -- it's a lot easier and cheaper than flying back out here).

We're always uploading new handicrafts and other product lines -- if you're on our mailing list, we automatically notify you (if you're not on the list, drop us an e-mail).

We now have a showroom on Bali for the convenience of our customers who fly in for a visit (air-conditioned, when the electricity is working).

Ok -- I hope you enjoy your visit with us. As we've mentioned elsewhere in our site, we're happy to help you in any way that we can, for profit or for personal satisfaction. If you need any help, just holler.

We're a small, informal company. Life out here is spiritually rich, and very relaxed. Very.

Cheers,

Steve

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