Young CEOS

Not all Indonesian teens occupy their time with the quest to be cool and fashionable;; there also are those who choose to dedicate their time, money and hard work to start their own business. Monique Natalia meets three people who started climbing the ladder of success at a young age.

Most 20-year-olds spend their free time bar and mall-hopping with their friends, but not Murdianingsih, or Dian, as she is known to her friends. She chose to spend her weekends running the small pet store she co-owned with her then boyfriend, now husband, Andre Gusasih.

That was in 1999; today the tiny store, called Pet Marts, has moved next door to a roomier space in Kemang, South Jakarta. It offers a pet grooming salon (fur dyeing is among the list of services), boarding and a pick-up service.

“It all started as a hobby,” said Dian. “I bought a Golden Retriever puppy in 1999 and I really got into the whole dog grooming thing.”

Her weekly shopping trips to a local pet store led to business offers from some suppliers.

“One supplier I got to know from the pet shop once jokingly said ‘Why don’t you start your own store?’”

Dian thought, ‘why not?’

 “We didn’t have employees back then, and we were looking after the shop ourselves,” explained the 28-year-old. “Because I already had a full-time job, my turn to help out at the shop was on the weekends.”

After a year they were able to expand the bare-basic shops to include a grooming salon and within the next two years rented the bigger space to accommodate their growing range of pet food, accessories and medications.

Dian also decided to quit her day job to work full time at the shop. “At first the thought of not having a steady income anymore scared the heck out of me, but the shop was starting to do really well and I knew that if I wanted to make it work I would have to make some sacrifices.”

Another sacrifice the couple made was losing three years of their social life.

“We literally dropped off the face of the earth, we stopped hanging out because we could not afford all the luxuries,” Dian recalled of a time when a mere trip to the movies became a cherished event.

Other challenges involved finding competent employees who were not afraid of dogs or dealing with customer complaints.

Even with all the start-up problems, quitting never entered Dian’s mind. “This was all we had, we just had to make it work.”

All the hard work has paid off. She is able to hang out in the office on the second floor of their store and play with their 1-year-old daughter. And gone are the days when going to the movies was a rare luxury.

“Now we always try to mix business with pleasure,” she said with a smile, with her future travel plans including seminars in Las Vegas and South Africa.

The street-wear devotee

Doing business also began as a hobby for Surya Andaru, now 24. Andaru is the owner of Nanonine, a concept store that sells locally made street wear clothing and apparel. His love for graphic design and fashion got him started.

With his older brother, he started the T-shirt label Satellite Castle, or Satcas, when he was only 18. They started with two designs; each design was made into two dozen T-shirts and sold by word of mouth and by consignment deals with distros, or stores that sell locally made street-wear brands. The T-shirts were a hit.

“We noticed that there weren’t many good distros in Jakarta, so we came up with the idea of starting our own store,” said Andaru.

In 2003 the Pelita Harapan University graduate and five friends pooled their money to open a 50m²  store. Each of them contributed Rp 8 million and Nanonine opened its doors. The name Nanonine was chosen because the number nine is considered lucky according to Chinese superstition.

And they were blessed with good fortune at the outset.

“We all got our money back in eight months,” the Vespa enthusiast announced proudly. “But six months after that it all started to go downhill, and after a year-and-a-half the profit was only enough to pay our employees.”

His partners bailed out of the business, but Andaru stayed the course.

“I saw that Satcas was still doing quite well and I took it as a positive sign … I never wanted to work for someone else and I just wanted to earn my own money. Buying something with your own hard-earned money always feels so much more satisfying than spending your parents’ money.”

Andaru has streamlined the shop’s marketing to create a concept store, with six main sections: sneakers, Satcas, 347 (a well-known street wear label from Bandung which started the whole distro trend), Sixteen D’Scale (local denim wear for men), Nanonine and one art and exhibition section where each brand in turn can create artwork to showcase its brand identity.

He also has two new stores (his operation employs 30 people) and owns six of his own labels: Satcas, Lite Streetwear, Sash, Nanonine, Ennea and Unquiet.

“My mission is to promote locally made street-wear brands,” he said enthusiastically while checking the work of his interior designer working on the expansion of the store on Jl. Lamandau, South Jakarta.

“Who knows, maybe one day we can compete with international brands!”  

Having fun

“Why not socialize, do something you enjoy, have fun and earn money while you’re at it,” answered Paul Andrew Stevens about his reasons for starting a business at the age of 16.

While Dian and Andharu needed capital to start their business, Andrew, now 21, only needed his skills and knowledge of Brazilian culture. Andrew, who is mixed Indonesian, English and Brazilian, is the founder and owner of Capoeira International Indonesia, an organization that focuses on developing Brazilian culture in Indonesia, with the martial art of capoeira as its main activity.

His love for Brazilian culture began when he took a one-year trip around the country at the age of 11.

“I mainly traveled around Bahia, the area where capoeira started, and I fell in love with it after seeing capoeira 24/7 on the street.”

He then started to study with a capoeira master in Bahia and took up the martial art seriously when he was in high school in Australia from 1999 to 2000. He started training with Brazilians living in Australia three to four times a week. After finishing high school, he decided to move to Indonesia in 2003.

When he first arrived he was disappointed to learn that few people knew anything about capoeira. His entrepreneurial side kicked in, and he decided to start his own organization to teach capoeira while giving Indonesians the chance to learn more about Brazilian culture.

The organization taught samba, batucada (Brazilian drums), maculele (Brazillian war dance), Brazilian jujitsu and Portuguese. He was the only teacher.

By relying on simple promotional tools (“Mainly photocopied posters I stuck on the street, using large print and with my phone number”) and word of mouth, the organization grew.

“Capoeira was the bread and butter of the whole business,” he said. “It skyrocketed in popularity and my students grew in number day by day.”

From four students at the start, today Andrew has 189 studying at four locations, including his Capoeira International Education and Entertainment Sport Center in Lebak Bulus, South Jakarta. “If you learn capoeira you can’t just learn to do flips and kicks, you also need to learn the culture that surrounds it.”

As well as income from the classes – starting at Rp 150,000 for a once-weekly class, Andrew’s organization puts on capoeira performances and does TV commercials. He says the total income is 15 times the amount of the early days of his business.

“All this comes with extra perks too.” he added with a big smile. ”Because we are doing shows everywhere, I know most club and fitness center owners and I can always get in for free.”

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