MENA Indonesia Supports Creative Economy in Traditional Villages

Through the platform, MENA Indonesia develops community-based social businesses to market traditional products. They also empower local ecosystems by involving traditional villages, one of which is producing diversified weaving products.

Not only as souvenirs, these woven products are also used as entry tickets for tourists to traditional villages whose production processes, financial management, and marketing are managed by organizations in traditional villages.

To DailySocial, The co-founder of MENA Indonesia, Ni Nyoman Sri Natih, said that in addition to providing solutions in the internal traditional village, woven derivative products were also developed into lifestyle brand ecosystem-based with the spirit of local values ​​coupled with contemporary design.

Product marketing is also supported by stories (story telling) behind the design and manufacture process that strengthens the identity of the product itself as an agent of Ngada culture preservation.

"Starting from Ngada, we agreed and committed to continue collaboration with local communities in several traditional villages, continuing the program while pioneering social entrepreneurship in the form of brand culture that represents local values ​​since 2018," said Ni Nyoman.

With a B2C business model and direct-to-consumer, market segmentation MENA are foreign tourists who like to travel eco-culture with concept live in with the local community. In addition, it also targets Indonesian people with income belonging to the A-B+ generation (X, Y, Z) who love local cultural values ​​in a more contemporary design in a handicraft product.

Expanding collaborations and partnerships

Overall, MENA currently has 5 female weavers, 2 male woven bracelet makers, 1 local coordinating partner. MENA has established partnerships with stores such as Dia.Lo.Gue and matalokal MBlocSpace in Jakarta; and the concept shop for Rumah Sanur in Bali.

By selling in stores, MENA is also available online at marketplace such as KuKa Indonesia and Moselo. MENA has also partnered with tokotoko.us in the United States, and is involved in various cultural shopping parties.

"The monetization strategy we are implementing is revenue streams from selling products in cooperation with partner store (offline), platform marketplaces, social media, and webstore. Profit sharing recently done for mask products. Previously, we gave appreciation incentives according to the number of products the weavers had finished making," said Ni Nyoman.

During this pandemic, the team works more responsively and adaptively to the existing conditions. Accessory products spread across partner stores have to close temporarily. MENA then moves on with the sale online via Instagram. Not only the Covid-19 case that has impacted Ngada, East Nusa Tenggara, also the high number of dengue cases has become the concern of MENA Indonesia.

"We took the initiative to make woven masks from patchwork and succeeded in making 52 masks of which 30% of the sales proceeds are for health donations – 5 KG ABATE for Ngada. Seeing the high enthusiasm of selling masks and considering that the MENA collaborator traditional village which is a tourist destination is closed, we responded by opening woven mask production batch 2 with the aim that localeconomy keep walking in the village with the scheme profit sharing with weavers," said Ni Nyoman.

Plan after the program Gojek Xcelerate

MENA is one of the 11 startups that are part of the program Gojek Xcelerate Batch 4. All of these selected startups are engaged in the direct-to-consumer, adapting to business challenges during the pandemic. When asked what the plan was after joining the program, MENA, which runs a social business, began to be pushed more progressively to determine a strategy, given that “scale up our business"along with impact metrics. The company also plans to raise funds.

"In the future, we plan to be more passive in strategy digital marketing and technology to optimize improvements you go out. Another thing, build valuable partnership with our collaborators and investors. These other collaborators and investors will add to the opportunities and demand agar localeconomy continue to run in the village, in addition to community capacity building which is continuously being carried out. We continue to strive so that the impact is felt holistically, both by the team, consumers, collaborators, investors, and the community," said Ni Nyoman.