Wide-Open Opportunities: IT Services for the Textile Industry

Excerpt from a feature on detikcom, 2002.

The opportunity for information technology and the internet in Indonesia's textile industry is still wide open. For years, large-scale textile companies have relied on equipment from abroad — so how can they innovate? “Even though many of Indonesia's textile companies operate at a large scale, plenty still use manual methods across various parts of their operations,” said Ir. Mico Wendy, CEO of Konsep.Net, in Bandung on Monday, 17 June 2002.

Fresh from the large-scale textile exhibition Bandung Intertex Expo 2002, held in the hangars of PT Dirgantara Indonesia (PT DI), Mico said the untapped potential in this area is considerable. “Just from that exhibition you can already see how many areas IT services could touch — and the market and purchasing power are genuinely there,” he said. The show, which closed on Sunday, 16 June 2002, drew dozens of major Indonesian and international textile companies, and the turnout of carefully screened visitors was remarkable, filling three large PT DI hangar complexes.

As a first step, Mico and a number of colleagues in Bandung set out to “educate the market” by building a textile portal to bring Indonesia's textile companies together. “We probably have to go slowly, before we can move toward a broader e-commerce concept like B2B, through the portal we're building,” he said. The portal, at www.textile.web.id, would hold a directory of Indonesian textile companies categorized by product type, production process, and material, along with links to associations, education directories, and other industry information. “The portal is still in development, so we're also waiting for input from users,” he said.