Lombok Diary : Bring up an Attractive Visual Display for The Villagers

On my previous post, you would see what I've been doing in Lombok, yap..educating the member of cooperatives to be in touch with technology and get used to the gadgets.

While nowadays, again we might say that smartphones or tablet and internet is the basic needs for us after food, clothing and housing (you know how it feels when you’re not connected to internet for only a few hours, it seems like we’re away from the universe :p), there are areas that still not connected to the world, or perhaps actually they know about the era of gadget and technology but they have no idea how it can affect and improve their life because they don’t have any access to it.

Indonesia has tens of thousands islands spreading from Aceh to Papua, separated by the ocean and a vast distance, where the technology (and any other parts such as economy and education) are not developed at the same level, we’ve been facing the above challenges down here. We realize that we have to start something to steal a glance at these circumstances and do something to bring these people up to involve ‘the world’.

The artisan of Ketak Handicraft at Koperasi Harapan Bersatu

INTRODUCING RETAIL MANAGEMENT & VISUAL MERCHANDISING KNOWLEDGE

Continuing our support for small-medium enterprise business in Indonesia under OVOP Program (One Village One Product), we constantly conduct the education in the form of training or workshop for the cooperatives. Our objective is to grow the team by injecting technology and equipped them with the skills needed so they could be financially independent.

After successfully hold range of digital and marketing trainings since October 2015, and being recognized at The 8^th Global CSR Summit Award 2016 on the  Best Community Program category, we are back to provide trainings that more varied in this year starting from Retail Management & Visual Merchandising that were -held in April 2016.

The first time we visited these cooperatives– Koperasi Harapan Bersatu (Ketak-handicraft) and Koperasi Stagen (hand-woven textile) at Central Lombok, the artisans have limited access to technology and have no enough knowledge about marketing, but now they are improved and getting used to the tablet that my company has given. The order starts to increase by people who see their Facebook fan-page - bringing some fresh air to the cooperatives. In other hand there are still ‘the off-line’ relevant capacities that need to be developed such as the ability of display management including to choose the best product to be displayed to attract potential customer.

Classroom Session: Retail Management & Visual Merchandising

We  held a classroom session on the 1^st day on 28 April 2016.This time we were not only inviting  our supported cooperative but also from various industries –such as handicraft, foods, printing and other hand woven textile cooperative. They have learnt about basic marketing principals (4P) by defining the product they wanted to sell, the price, the promotion strategy and the place. Visual merchandising theory was also being taught at the first day to open their mind what else is needed to sale the product. We also conducted a focus group discussion by dividing the participants into smaller groups to have discussion at the end of the sessions. The class is fun knowing that participants are not only learned about the topics given, but also they are so eager to discuss about tourism development in Lombok. They point out some current issues to be discussed and try to brainstorm about what they can do to contribute to make a change.

FGD at classroom session

The materials taken from around the house for visual merchandising training

The most interesting part was on the 2^nd day, we had hands-on training in two Cooperatives supported by my company to build a display corner. The member of each cooperative were asked to gather any kind of things around the house that can be useful for display materials such as earthenware, bamboo stairs, wooden chairs and weaving-racks, we also bring them some interesting samples such as a weaving mannequin and other materials. We encourage them to find the recycled stuffs, trying to point out that to create an artsy gallery doesn’t have to be expensive. Then finally, they have awesome display corner in each place! 

before

After

Coming up, more digital workshops aim to push them to be able to blog which is more than to sell the products but also to focus on presenting the unique story behind the product contains of the richness of Indonesian culture. We are also working on the eco-production workshop and put an effort to link them to Indonesian market. Hopefully, the cooperative will be independent in the future...:)