1. Startups

Rupawa Hopes to Become a Forum for Indonesia's Online Graphic Design Community (UPDATED)

The creativity of Indonesian designers is actually not inferior to foreign designers, but the place to accommodate the creativity of these artists in Indonesia is still very minimal. This is the background Fung Fuk Lestario to officially launch Rupawa on 27 November with beta status. Rupawa is an online graphic design community forum that provides a means for graphic designers to display their works to the wider community, obtain profit sharing from the sale of products that use their work, and also to exchange ideas to advance the design community.

In an email to DailySocial, Fung admitted that the initial idea of ​​establishing Rupawa had actually been on his mind since 2012 when he was still actively managing Lazada Indonesia. He further explained that in fact since childhood he had loved illustration, but unfortunately never had the opportunity to pursue this hobby professionally. The important point that made Fung decide to realize Rupawa was when he met Kevin Tanjung who had a similar vision.

When we mentioned what features Rupawa already had, Fung said, "Currently we already have features such as submitting design works, voting with 'likes', share design for social media, comment field to give specific feedback and appreciation to design, and purchase. In the future we will add payment options, 'gifting' services, and so on."

Although it is still in beta status, currently Rupawa has performed well. There are only two pages that we found that still cannot be accessed, namely the Blog and Forum pages.

Regarding the business model, Fung explained that Rupawa carried the model crowdsourcing where the design community or Rupawa artists, known as RupArtists, produce important elements in the products offered and implement a profit-sharing system. Unfortunately, we still haven't received further information about the margin of the profit-sharing system that Rupawa applies per product.

Currently the medium of creativity for RupArtists is in the form of design t-shirts with technology Direct-to-Garments (DTG). As described in FAQ page, DTG technology can make the color of the design directly attached to the fabric without a transfer process. As for the t-shirt material, Rupawa chose the medium T-shirt Gildan Softstyle, which is a cotton t-shirt combed ringspun 100%.

Furthermore, Fung explained that until the end of 2014 Rupawa's main focus was to ensure an excellent process in serving the designers and consumers of the products of these designers. As for 2015, Fung wants to be able to collaborate with more and more reliable graphic designers and disseminate their works as widely as possible to foreign countries.

The presence of Rupawa will make the competition for startups with similar models even tighter. Indirectly, if you look at Rupawa's focus on graphic design and also holding competitions, Rupawa will face Kreavi and Sribu.com. Besides that, there are still Tees.co.id and ChangeBaju.com which has a business model similar to the medium of t-shirts. Keep in mind, Fung Fuk Lestario is not new to the startup world. The experience with Lazada Indonesia as co-Founder and Managing Director and his career in Ciputra GEPI Incubator will be a strong capital in running this business.

Update: The following is an addition by Fung Fuk Lestario via email regarding when exactly Rupawa was launched, "We never existed launch others before November 27, 2014. I myself have just started todesignlayoutwebsite Rupawa in September. The new Rupawa.com domain is filled in content it's November 25, 2014 for pre-beta-launch-testing and before that it was completely inaccessible."

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