American investors from the Footwear Distributors and Retailers Association are currently in Indonesia to seek business opportunities in the country as a highly potential footwear supplier and market in the future.
FDRA president R. Matthew Priest said Tuesday in Jakarta that association members were looking for different sourcing platforms in the next 5 to 10 years and considered the Indonesian industry a prospective supplier for long-term sourcing.
“Indonesia really has a strong workforce. It’s a kind of opportunity for us to produce more of our products here,” he said after a press conference at the Trade Ministry.
Priest added that Indonesia’s huge population also offered the opportunity for FDRA members to market their products throughout the country.
The FDRA said that members’ exports to Indonesia had increased in recent years. In 2009, for example, the sales of retailers and distributors reached US$446 million and rose 32.1 percent to $593 million in 2010.
Exports of rubber and plastic footwear to Indonesia jumped significantly by 92.2 percent to $27.16 million in 2010 from $15.31 million a year earlier.
Wolverine president of global operations group Michael McBreen said his firm was seeking new partners in the country to add to its three Indonesian suppliers in Greater Jakarta and East Java.
“We are here today because we are looking for opportunities for sourcing in Indonesia. We want to add more companies to source [from] for our brands,” he said.
Currently, Breen said, his firm sourced supplies in 43 different factories in Asia, including China, Vietnam and India.
“China is still our major supplier, 70 percent of products are from China. Indonesia is smaller, less than 10 percent and we expect its supply to grow faster,” he said.
Wolverine markets footwear to 180 countries around the world, including Indonesia.
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The head of the workers’ union at a Converse factory in Sukabumi, West Java, dismissed on Wednesday a recent report by The Associated Press alleging rampant rights violations.
“We have no idea where they got the report. It’s slander,” Doni Sudarsono, head of the union at Glostar Indonesia, told the Jakarta Globe.
AP reported last week that dozens of workers at the factory, which produces Converse sneakers for Nike, claimed “supervisors throw shoes at them, slap them and call them dogs and pigs.”
Glostar Indonesia, according to Doni, is owned by the Taiwanese Pou Chen Group and is the only Converse factory in the area, meaning it was the factory referred to by AP.
“As far as I’m concerned, we haven’t seen such abuses [as claimed in the report] for a long time now,” Doni said.
He added that he had led the union for the past four years, the same length of time the factory has been producing Converse sneakers.
Doni said that while the union was not powerful, it was vocal whenever there was inappropriate conduct at the factory.
“In previous incidents, whenever anyone, including [foreign] bosses, treated workers inappropriately, we protested and most of them had to return to their home country,” he said.
Iwan Ridwan, the head of Sukabumi’s manpower office, told the Globe on Wednesday that even though there was labor friction in the area, his office often sided with the workers.
“I won’t deny that there are imperfections in the management [of factories],” Iwan said. “We are not supposed to take sides [in resolving disputes], but for nationalism’s sake, we side with our workers.”
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