Importing from Bali by Suitcase

Jan 4, 2010 by Sean

Being a suitcase importer — where to go in Bali and what to buy…

If that’s what you want to do, here are some points you may want to consider:

Finding the products is not that hard…

Really. Well, in Bali that’s true — you’re on your own when it comes to Thailand or anywhere else. You’ll need to check out the travel and expat forums for those countries.

In Bali, however, most of the craft, jewelry and clothing places are within easy reach and clustered together. You also have to bear in mind that you’re not looking for production pieces which makes your life considerably more easy (perhaps a little more expensive) than more mainstream importers but you’re still head and shoulders above anyone buying from wholesalers back in the West.

Your key areas will be the high street in Kuta, Kuta Square and the main road that leads from Kuta towards Legian and Seminyak (Jalan Raya Kuta). You can also check out Sukawati Art Market. You can also look around Ubud and Celuk. These are all main buying and shopping areas. They’re easy to find and easy to reach. Remember, you’re not looking for production or custom design work… really, what you’re doing is a combination of shopping and bargain hunting.

Prices

This is pretty easy. You’ll run into a few different types of store but, for our purposes, you only need to concentrate on these two types:

Bali shops and traders who lay out their products with price tags…
…and they may also have a notice somewhere in the store that reads, “fixed prices”. This used to be a big deal in Bali and without being 100% certain, I seem to remember it came into fashion because of Japanese tourists getting stunned into timidity by the whole process of bargaining and feeling that they were being ripped off by unscrupulous vendors.

If you’re not comfortable with haggling and negotiating, these vendors will help you relax. That said, and I know this is common sense, but just because a shop has a notice saying “fixed prices” doesn’t necessarily mean the prices are actually fixed… you can still try to bargain or push for a discount especially if you’re buying a lot of items.

The worst that anyone can say is “no” and, let’s face it: “no” is not the end of the world, is it?

If you’re not in a mad hurry, you’ll shop around a little (hopefully a lot) before you end up buying anything and, for sure, the fixed price shops are great for benchmarking and comparisons.

Let’s say you walk into a nice shop, modern looking, with a good layout and fixed prices and find something you like for ten dollars and you think the price is good. Now, without talking to anyone (the shopkeepers and sales assistants can be painfully and annoyingly overhelpful on the hard sell), you can walk straight back out again and continue up the street looking for the same or similar pieces at half the price. If you’re able to quickly find a similar piece at half the price, it may be worth your while to grab a business card from the half price place, note the price (take a picture if the seller is ok with that) and move on down the road… you may be able to halve that price again.

Sometimes, you’ll find the fixed prices are good or, more importantly, good enough. I’ll come back to the ‘good enough’ concept of pricing a little later.

Bali shops and traders who lay out their products without price tags…

Some of the shops you walk into or trading stalls you stop at won’t have any prices anywhere. You’ll end up finding something you quite like, having to pick it up and bring it over to the shopkeeper to find out how much it is…

…now everyone has a different experience of this situation but for me, it’s always been somewhat comical.

I ask, in English or Bahasa Indonesia (depending on my mood), “How much is this?”
The shopkeeper will sometimes give me a top-to-toe lookover and then answer, “X dollars or X rupiah.” I usually take that as the body language equivalent of, “How much have you got?” And that’s just fine: it’s a starting position for a good, old fashioned haggle. What amuses me most is that the shopkeeper in this instance hasn’t consulted a price sheet or a list. In fact (and don’t tell me this isn’t comical), they have pulled out the price without even looking at the product; they’re only judging me.

Sometimes, if I’m answered in dollars and I’m in a bad mood, I’ll be out of the door and out of the store before the vendor has completely finished answering. Sometimes, for the hell of it, I’ll reply in Indonesian just to mess with them a little. But mostly, I’ll leave quickly. I understand hotels using dollars and I understand big companies using dollars but I cannot understand local stores and restaurants using dollars. It just doesn’t make sense.

Sometimes I’ll ask and the shopkeeper will take a good long look at the product, perhaps consult a price sheet and then give me the price as a question, “X much?” As if to say, “Is that too much?” Or, “Do you think ‘x’ rupiah is too much?”

And sometimes, the shopkeeper or vendor will look at me with a completely blank expression as if I were the first person ever (EVER) to walk into the place and ask the price.

In Bali, you’re never going to get the absolute, best ever price.

Before you begin to negotiate, it’s worth bearing in mind that pricing in Bali is based on a number of factors:

Who are you and where are you from? One price for Balinese people, one price for Javanese and Indonesian citizens from other islands, another price for ethnic Chinese, another price for Australians, another for Japanese and Koreans, another for Americans… now that I come to list them all out, Bali pricing is quite impressively complex. I can’t guess if this seems fair to you or not. I remember feeling surprised and a little indignant in Hawaii when I learned there was different pricing for kama’aina and another price for haole but I was younger then and don’t feel that way any more. Part of it is down to provincialism, some of it is racism, a little more is just stereotyping but when it comes to Westerners, it’s just good sense. By virtue of being a foreigner and being in Bali, you’re richer. Deal with it. You can offset this slightly with a few words of Bahasa Indonesia but that doesn’t help as much as a lot of people think.

How much will the market bear? Same principle as with any Western retail set-up… if the market values a thing at ‘x’ dollars, every vendor will try to sell it at at least ‘x’ dollars and more. Sometimes, a Western vendor will try all sorts of little, usually bullshit, incentives to distinguish their offering… a brand, a logo, a signature, a story, a sale, a mega sale, an incredibly mega, super, can’t miss this, all stock must go, I’m-shooting-myself-in-the-foot-sale, sale but, all-in-all, “what the market will bear” is a fairly global way of arriving at a sell price. You can offset this by haggling and negotiating and, when necessary, walking away. In other words, you need the vendor to know that in your case, the market won’t bear all that much. Being prepared to walk away, in my opinion, is the most important trait or mindset of a good negotiator. And, just so you’re clear on what I mean: when you start haggling and bargaining over prices, if you’re not ready to walk away when you’re not satisfied, you’re not going to get what you want.

How many or how much are you going to buy? The volume price. You’ll pay one price if you’re buying one piece but if you’re buying ten or twenty or fifty pieces, you should be able to work out a decent discount. Don’t forget, however, that the amount of discount diminishes with volume — meaning, buying fifty pieces might get you a ten percent discount but buying a hundred won’t get you a better price at all. So if a particular item works out as a dollar each based on fifty pieces and still a dollar each if you buy one hundred pieces, you can stop at fifty pieces. Also, you might want to bear the following in mind: most of the products you’re looking at in Bali are handmade — that’s part of their charm and part of their perceived value overseas. With handmade products, you don’t get a sliding scale of lower pricing against higher volume. This stuff doesn’t come out of a factory so the cost of making one thousand pieces for one order is exactly the same as making one piece for one thousand separate orders. So, what you’re negotiating or cutting is the profit of the supplier or the maker. I hope that made sense because it’s fairly important to keep in the back of your mind. There is, however, the notion of the ‘business price’ vs the everyday shop price. Most of the time, I ignore this because every vendor says it and it doesn’t seem to be all that much. If I’m in a place that is obviously a shop rather than the front end of a craft place or factory, I will ask the difference between the normal and the business price — I’m often told fifteen percent… at which point I usually make a wisecrack or say something a little rude.

What time of day is it? A lot of people used to talk about the difference between the usual price and the morning price. The thinking seemed to go along the lines of the Balinese dropping their prices at the very start of the day in order to generate luck and get the business day rolling. To most intents and purposes, the morning price is a lot like the business price and I give it about as much weight (which is to say, very little). Maybe there is something to it. I do know that at the Art Market in Sukawati, the market opens up pre-dawn with one type of pricing and then re-opens around 9 or 10 in the morning with tourist pricing but as far as I remember, that had little to do with luck. It was mainly down to most of the suppliers and buyers predawn were business people selling to each other. Like a fruit and vegetable market in any other country.

To sum up: you’re never going to get the absolute best price. There is no such thing as the right price and you’re wasting your time if that’s what you run around trying to find… you may as well go looking for the Holy Grail or El Dorado (typical: the day after I wrote this, the Guardian puts out a story that El Dorado has been found… bloody typical). The only yardstick and the thing you must try to keep in mind at all times is, “what’s the right price for me?” In other words, if you buy at one, can you take it home and sell it for five, six, ten or twenty? If fact, if you follow that one rule-of-thumb, you’ll do pretty well. It will save you time, help you walk away when you need to walk away, help you refine your product choice. I’m not saying it’s the ultimate secret of life, love and happiness. It’s just a damn good thing to keep in mind.

Ok, deep breath. Relax. We’re nearly finished (this ended up being a lot longer than I anticipated). On the next page, I’ll talk a little bit about the products themselves and bring them all home. And then, no doubt to your relief (and certainly mine), I’ll say goodnight.

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