Contemporary Indonesian Fashion: Through the Looking Glass by Alessandra Lopez y Royo

Author:Alessandra Lopez y Royo [Royo, Alessandra Lopez y]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: design, Fashion & Accessories, Business & Economics, Industries, Fashion & Textile Industry, Social Science, Media Studies, anthropology, Cultural & Social, Customs & Traditions
ISBN: 9781350061323
Google: ZEKwDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2019-10-31T23:59:58.735522+00:00

Fashion e-commerce in Indonesia: Battleground for the tech titans

Global digitalization is now on such a scale that we are witnessing a marked shift from “corporate-centric” to “crowd-centric” capitalism, as well as the growth of what is popularly known as “sharing” or “access” economies (such as Airbnb and Uber).53 The use of social media has been steadily on the rise in Indonesia. Jakarta was declared, “Twitter capital of the world” by Semiocast in 2012, on the basis of the daily use of Twitter made by Jakartans. A great number of Indonesians, especially in urban centers, are also on Facebook and Instagram, and avidly watch YouTube channels.54 An increasingly greater number of brands in Indonesia, as elsewhere, are now able to reach out to potential shoppers through a number of platforms providing information about products, including the use of text messages and WhatsApp, the most widely used messaging app among Indonesians. Shoppers can also, in a greater number of instances, buy online.

In Indonesia, since 2011, e-commerce in its m-commerce variance—very important in a country where the majority of people access the internet via their mobile phones rather than computers55—has seen a prodigious increase and has been rewarded with excellent profits. There has been the incredible success story of Go-Jek, the unicorn native to Indonesia,56 a company that offers a series of services, including motorbike rides, and which also has a Go-Pay mobile wallet that can be used to buy anything, from food to beauty treatments at home (or at a salon).

There are online marketplaces such as Tokopedia, through which all sorts of goods can be bought, and online malls such as Blibli, which also sells designer clothes. Zalora, with a considerable presence across Southeast Asia specializes in fashion and offers goods from a range of Indonesian and international brands. It is a start-up with some similarities to Farfetch, launched in 2008 by Portuguese entrepreneur José Neves. Farfetch is now one of the most competitive online platforms for fashion and luxury items, not (yet) available in Indonesia, but already on mainland Southeast Asia. There are indeed several more such companies.57

The question that is constantly being asked about e-commerce, globally, is whether it spells the demise of malls. This will not happen in Indonesia any time soon. Though the country has not been lagging behind in terms of embracing the opportunities that e-commerce has afforded, brick and mortar malls are not going to go away, not for a while. The reason for this is that e-commerce in Indonesia has not yet fully matured. To ensure its full growth, the whole country needs to have better digital access and offer greater internet security. At the moment, most internet use is confined to urban and educated higher earners, located in Java and Bali, and the necessary measures to enable smooth online financial transactions remain elusive and highly problematic.58

However, widening internet access is linked with the socio-economic divides of the country. As Pangetsu and Dewi suggest, it is the policy-makers’ responsibility to address the issue. They also

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