April 22nd, 2008 indonesiaexport
We’ve made a few small changes to our structure over the past 2 days — hopefully, they’ll make your life easier.
The Indonesia Export Site Map
You can access this from our Information tab in the top navigation menu. We hope it will give you a clean and easy way to navigate through the website.
Product Index with Thumbnails
In addition to our Alphabetical Product Index, we’ve now added an Alphabetical Index with Thumbnails (first image from every category). You’ll have to navigate through page by page (using the menu at the bottom) but rather than our sometimes obscure product line titles, you’ll have a handy small image to help you identify what you’re looking for.
Product Index by Type
We’ve also broken down the different product lines into categories that may help you find similar or related product lines while you’re putting together an order. No hard or fast rules, just fairly general headings:
- Furniture
- Classic Bali Carvings — Decorative Artwork & Craft
- Modern Craft — Decorative Giftware & Home Decor from Bali, Lombok & Java
- Candles, Incense & Oils
- Homeware, Tableware & Functional Home Decor
- Stone, Glass, Ceramic & Terracotta
- Stock Lists
(These links, by the way, are clickable — you can use them to go straight to the relevant section on the Product Index.)
Finally, I had removed the Logon link from the top navigation bar — sorry about that, it’s back now.
Afternoon,
Sean
Posted in F.A.Q.s, General News | Comments Off
August 30th, 2007 indonesiaexport
When most people think of the didgeridoo I would guess that, like me, they think of the Australian instrument.
Didgeridoos, however, are also made in Bali — we should know, it was one of our earliest product lines (we’ve been producing and shipping them since 1998).
A couple of weeks ago, we raised rainstick and didgeridoo prices by nearly double. The hike was long overdue; we hadn’t raised any of the digeridoo pricing for a few years and it turned out we were getting killed on the pricing.
Since then, we’ve been doing our best to look for alternative carvers and pricing to bring the line back down to a more realistic price level and we think we’ve done it.
To give you just one example, a 120cm bamboo didgeridoo (as in the picture) is now priced at US$3.76 each… I’ve seen bamboos of the same type and size for sale in the UK at around US$35.00.
The new prices are now online (you need to be logged in before you can see those prices) so please take a moment to look them over and let us know how we’re doing.
http://www.indonesiaexport.com/frame.php?category=Drums%2C+Rainsticks+%26+Didgeridoos
Along with pricing, we’ll be taking pictures of new models sometime over the next couple of weeks — I’ll update with a news story at that time.
Enjoy,
Sean
Posted in General News, Product Feature | Comments Off
June 25th, 2007 indonesiaexport
Wednesday this week (June 27th, 2007) is the Balinese Galungan celebration.
It’s not a red day (as national holidays are marked red in the Indonesian calendar system) but we will be closed along with most every other company in Bali for one of the more important holidays of the year.
Here’s a little background information on the holiday (mostly copied from Wikipedia).
The Balinese calendar (or Pakuwon) is a cycle of 210 days and has absolutely nothing in common with the international or Gregorian calendar.
The day celebrates the victory of “Dharma” (virtue) upon “Adharma” (evil) — the word Galungan means, “when the Dharma is winning”.
Galungan marks the beginning of the most important recurring religious ceremony that is celebrated by all Balinese.
During the Galungan period the deified ancestors of the family descend to their former homes. They must be suitably entertained and welcomed, and prayers and offerings must be made for them.
Those families who have ancestors that have not yet been cremated, but are still buried in the village cemetery, must make offerings at the graves.
Although Galungan falls on a Wednesday, most Balinese will begin their Galungan ‘holiday’ on Tuesday — this is when the family begins to prepare offerings and food for the next day.
Leading up to Galungan, everyone has a job to do.
One of the odd — you could say, ‘funny’ — things about Bali is that there are many, many holidays & ceremonies but in our experience, everyone works much harder for a ceremony than they would in an office or on a construction site for that matter.
And, of all the Balinese holidays, Galungan is probably the busiest and the most expensive in terms of offerings, feast & decorations.
There is the purchase of fruit for offerings; a pig for slaughter; pastries, snacks and so on and many flowers and coconut fiber for making ‘banten’ — a standard woven offering. I’ll often walk out of the office to find a small woven basket of flowers and perfume ‘banten’ on my car or under my foot (they’re easy to miss and tread on). The banten for Galungan are bigger, more complicated. The making of banten, by the way, does require skill — Arie’s mum has been practicing for years and only recently felt accomplished enough to make them properly.
Traditionally, the men of the family get together to buy a pig and then kill it.
Around this time, you often see small flatbed trucks wizzing around with rattan baskets in the back — a pig in each basket.
With the pig sorted, the men will get up around 4 or 5 in the morning to slaughter the pig — the meat is diced, ground and made into sate (kebabs) and the guys also make lawar – that’s a dish I’ve always found kind of gross — it’s basically mixed vegetables sometimes with raw pig’s blood and pork. I’ve also heard of white lawar which has no blood. The only time I got close to trying it, it was a crazy hot concoction by one of our friends (Arie was crying).
Once that’s done, the guys usually move on to making the penjor — curvy, bamboo poles heavily decorated and placed outside the homes, temples and the sides of the streets.
On Wednesday, the day of Galungan, one will find that most Balinese will try to return to their own ancestral home at some stage during the day, even if they work in another part of the island. This is a very special day for families, where offerings are made to God and to the family ancestors who have come back to rest at this time in their family temple. As well as the family temple, visits are made to the village temple with offerings as well, and to the homes of other families who may have helped the family in some way over the past six months.
The day after Galungan is a time for a holiday, visiting friends, maybe taking the opportunity to head for the mountains for a picnic. Everyone is still seen to be in their ‘Sunday best’ as they take to the streets to enjoy the festive spirit that Galungan brings to Bali.
So, courtesy of Wikipedia and Arie, there you have it: a kind of Christmas, Halloween & Thanksgiving all rolled into one day.
See you on Friday.
Sean
Posted in General News | Comments Off
June 4th, 2007 indonesiaexport
A quick note to explain that we’re going to close the comments section of our News & Updates area at Indonesia Export.
It’s just too much work.
This morning, I had 1,720 comments and, from what I could tell, not one of them was from a human being. Sad.
Along with the 1,720 dummy ads for drugs that do this and people that do that, I had another 943 bits of junk on one of our email accounts and over 800 bits of junk on the main email account.
I might not mind so much if I had super high speed internet but, alas, Bali is not the smartest tool in the shed when it comes to the Internet Superhighway.
So, I start getting the stuff at around 9 in the morning and now, it’s lunchtime.
Of course, if you do want to make a comment, send us an email.
Morning,
Sean
Posted in General News | Comments Off
May 31st, 2007 indonesiaexport
After a few requests from different customers (old & new), we’ve taken some time to reorganise our Best Sellers category.
I hope you enjoy the new presentation — we’ve picked out our most popular categories and, even more importantly, when you click into that category, you’ll be shown only the best selling models in that particular line.
Some things to bear in mind:
Best Sellers are real products that we’ve shipped to real customers over the past twelve months from our catalogue pages. That means you won’t get a chance to see some of the custom work we’ve done and you won’t get a chance to judge the “unique products” — like the 5, 6 and 8 foot high suar statues and so on.
Another point: just because a product is a Best Seller, that doesn’t mean it’s best for you… it may sound obvious when I put it like that but, for sure, you’ll always be the best judge of your individual markets and customers.
That said, if you want our advice or feel that you could benefit from a brainstorming session, drop us a line — we’re happy to help in any way.
All of that said, I hope the new presentation gives you something to think about or at least helps clear a path into the catalogue.
Please go to:
http://www.indonesiaexport.com/hottest.php
Enjoy,
Sean
Posted in F.A.Q.s, General News, Product Feature | Comments Off
May 29th, 2007 indonesiaexport
If you were to take our price sheets in Excel format — no pictures, just codes, sizes, prices and so on — and set up the document to print, you would be looking at over 900 pages of densely packed type.
If you were to add even small images (thumbnails) to that document, you might be looking at 5,000 pages in all.
In the past 3 months, we’ve added nearly 3,000 products online (including substantial updates to popular categories).
To cut a long story short, we’re simply not kidding when we say that we have just too many products and too many updates to keep a print version of our catalogue up to date.
Over the past few weeks, we’ve spent a little time trying to come up with useful solutions and now, I’m happy to say, we’re able to offer you a full DVD version of our website.
Like the original, the DVD catalogue version of Indonesia Export has all the pricing and information. You can search through it exactly as if you were online.
We’ve even gone so far as to include a few extras:
- Additional product images from around Bali.
- The Excel spreadsheet version of all our pricing (in case you’re in the mood to print 900 pages).
- Traditional Balinese Music — hours of Balinese music in MP3 format.
- A freeware image viewer (Farstone) that is a lot more convenient and powerful than the image viewers built in with Windows.
Requirements
- PC Compatible Computer running Microsoft Windows (we’ve tested on XP only but should run with Windows 98, 2000, XP & Vista).
- A DVD drive on your laptop or computer (we would have liked to offer a CD but there’s simply too much information — nearly 3 Gigabytes in total).
That’s it.
Pricing
The DVD Catalogue is free for all our existing customers. You need only send us an email to confirm that you want the DVD and please confirm your mailing address. We’ll send the DVD out by standard post — it will take a week or so to reach you.
If you have not ordered from Indonesia Export but would like a copy of the DVD, there will be a charge of US$30.00 to cover expenses. If, after you receive the DVD, you decide to order from us, we’ll deduct that US$30.00 fee from your order.
Simple as that.
Please send an email to indonesiaexport@indonesiaexport.com for your copy.
Enjoy,
Sean
Posted in F.A.Q.s, General News | Comments Off
May 7th, 2007 indonesiaexport
If you’re wondering where we’ve hidden all of our jewelry lines, you’ll need to take a quick hop over to our other domain: Beads-Bali.com.
We know that Jewelry Buyers do business very differently from handicraft and furniture buyers so here are some notes before you go:
Minimum Orders: we know that jewelry buyers aren’t likely to be buying container loads of silver beads out of Bali and we also know that because of the “fashion” aspect of jewelry, many people will need to sample products before making their investments — with that in mind, we’ve set minimum orders at US$100.00.
Beads-Bali is set up for small (usually courier) shipments — all shipping charges (including packing material and all the other extras) are included in the online prices. 
Just as with Indonesia Export, we’ll be happy to consolidate your shipments — meaning, if you are buying products from other companies in addition to our own, we will happily cooperate with them to get all the products together to make the whole thing one shipment thus, easier and more cost-effective for you.
Custom orders are welcome and will not be included in the online catalogue for other customers.
Beads-Bali carries the same guarantee as Indonesia Export: we guarantee all of our products — if there is a problem with your order because of an error on our part (of any kind), then we will assume responsibility and credit you in full against your next order or transfer back your payment.
In the event that there is a problem, we may ask you to return the products to us (we’ll pay the shipping fees) before we return your money or issue a credit against your next order.
Ok, I guess we’re all done with the serious stuff, enjoy the new catalogue:
www.beads-bali.com
Sean
Posted in Beads Bali, General News, New Products | No Comments »
October 9th, 2006 indonesiaexport
We’ve been online doing what we do (the
voodoo we do) for quite some time now.
11 years this December at the current count — check out the creation date in
red below.
Domain Name: INDONESIAEXPORT.COM
Registrar: TUCOWS INC.
Whois Server:
whois.opensrs.net
Status: ACTIVE
EPP Status: ok
Updated Date:
21-Sep-2006
Creation Date:
22-Dec-1995
Expiration Date: 21-Dec-2006
My, how time flies when you’re having fun.
Interesting though, a few months ago, I stumbled across a news article in
Wired, I think, talking about the web archive [http://web.archive.org] where you could see
old versions of Yahoo and the like.
Natch, I didn’t think little old us would turn up on their pages but there we
were — at least going back to 1997 — interested? Check it out at:
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.indonesiaexport.com
We haven’t changed all that much — comes down to a couple of very basic
rules: Keep it simple (Stupid!) and if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Sean
Posted in General News | No Comments »
February 15th, 2006 indonesiaexport
So, here I go again — someone else ripping off Indonesia Export text and pictures.
I don’t wanna put the complete link inside this page as, most likely, it will help whoever it is get a better profile in the search engines…
…the name of the website is ombali… they’re using our text from the front page like this:
Selamat datang di Om Export International (or you can
read it as “Welcome to Our Place”).
We’ve just finished our two year on the Internet (thank you).
Customers are always asking us “what sells best” — so, based
on the actual dollar volume of product that we have sold during the past
six years, we’ve re-organized our products into three simple categories
(you don’t need to ask anymore).
In business for two years but what sells best for six years… great: a company that can’t do basic maths, can’t write original text and can’t take their own pictures. If you choose to do business with them, heaven help you (because we sure can’t).
By the way, at any time, anyone from anywhere is welcome to ask if “such and such” or “so and so” is a real company over here in Bali (we’ve been around a while and we know a few people).
I never trash talk real competitors so if you ask me about a company and I know they’re real, I’ll tell you they’re real. Ask me about a company and I don’t know them, I’ll tell you so and probably advise you to ask for references.
Ask me about a company like Ombali and I’ll tell you they’re useless, good-for-nothing fakers and advise you against doing business.
That’s all. Have a pleasant afternoon.
Sean
Technorati Tags: bali, handicrafts, warning, export, fake
Posted in General News | No Comments »
February 15th, 2006 indonesiaexport
Just found the performancing extension for Firefox 1.5 — this is the first test but if it works, I’ll have to find ways to heap praise on the author (Chris Garrett).
Technorati Tags: firefox, perfomancing, extension, praise
Posted in General News | No Comments »
