Local Headscarf Battling for Pole Position in Home Ground

Paris, Milan, and New York are quintessential cities that are known as the breeding grounds of world-renowned fashion houses in the high fashion sector. 

Jakarta, Indonesia, might not be a contender in the Haute Couture space, but for the last decade, Jakarta has dominated as the qibla for the world’s modest Muslim fashion. 

This is evident as, throughout 2022, we’ve seen international Muslim fashion weeks and events in Jakarta. Two of the biggest are the Jakarta Muslim Fashion Week and the Indonesia International Modest Fashion Festival. 

One accessory dominates the market, Hijab, or the traditional turned fashionable headscarf, is all the woes in the capital. 

With more than one billion hijabs sold in the country, generating more than USD 6 Billion in sales annually but only about 25% are produced in the country. 

And why is that? Cheap imports have dominated the market, enjoying low tariffs and minimum barriers to entry, especially with the ease of consumers ordering from international e-commerce platforms. 

And this has got to stop. Indonesia is at a loss here. The money that could circulate and help the local economy is flown out of the country to help industries overseas.

As the biggest market in Southeast Asia, Indonesia has to stop to be just that, a market. 

We must start supporting and empowering our entrepreneurs and workers with the skills and industry know-how to capture the opportunity presented. 

KADIN sees two kinds of entrepreneurship in the hijab production ecosystem. First, the designer and marketer, and the other is the producing manufacturer, those who cut, sew, and assemble the garments. 

KADIN Indonesia launched several programs to breed and assist entrepreneurs in scaling their production and capturing a wider market. 

Our flagship inclusive closed-loop program aims at assisting manufacturers to be mentored by multiple stakeholders, namely big corporations, financial institutions, and the government, to learn scaling up productions, get financing, and ensure off-takers of the product.

Our Wiki Wirausaha platform, on the other hand, aims to provide a knowledge repository and networking platform for budding entrepreneurs on how to best design, market, package, and price their products, so it's attractive and competitive with the likes in the market. 

Apart from building entrepreneurs, we also need help from civil societies to instill a sense of pride within the population to purchase and wear locally-made products. Erasing stigmas that Indonesian made are inferior to imported products.

With a population exceeding 270 million people, Indonesia is estimated to have 68 million small and medium-sized enterprises,

The next ten years could be a golden opportunity for these businesses to grow, as the country is predicted to reach the height of its demographic dividend when the share of the working-age population is at its highest level. If more goods start to be produced locally, it could transform the economy.