During my short trip to a small village located in Blitar, I visited some of the crafters in the rural areas. I observed that they crafted bakiak slippers, traditional slippers whose soles are made of light wood with old tired foot straps. Seeing the quality of the slippers I felt that such products deserve more consumers.
Therefore, I was inspired in assisting the bakiak sellers to popularize their products and help them gain more income. Upon executing the plan, I found 2 enormous benefits of this project:
Financial Assistance
By Popularizing the crafters’ businesses, I managed to dramatically increase their income. To execute the plan, I estimated the pricing and created a marketing plan to make the bakiak more appealing to the broader range of customers.
Promoting them through social media and connecting them to Tokopedia, Indonesia’s popular E-commerce, the revenue gained by the crafters rose dramatically. Beyond promoting the products, I also enabled them to improve the machines and technologies to craft and design the bakiaks.
Preserving Indonesian Culture
Unlike any other popular Indonesian cultural heritage such as Batik, Wayang, and Kris, I saw the potential of bakiak to play an outstanding role as the most popular cultural footwear of Indonesia. Since bakiak slipper is one of the oldest and the long forgotten cultural heritage of Indonesia, I was eager to preserve the bakiak slippers from extinction by expanding its marketing.
I believe that popularizing the crafters’ bakiak slippers would widen people’s visibility of them, not just in Indonesia but also on an international scale.
From a single amusement park to one of the largest cities in Indonesia, these bakiak crafters from Blitar’s bucolic areas successfully broaden their range of customers by selling the products all over Indonesia.
By this project, I revealed the hidden gems of these crafters and the bakiak slippers as well: Not only that I assisted the crafters’ income, but also expanded the communities’ visibility of the bakiak slippers.