Senen Flea Market - Part 1: Jakarta, Indonesia

By Wombat | May 29th, 2006 | 4 Comments »

I enjoy exploring small markets in out-of-the-way places in any city and one that I would like to have a look at is Senen Market in Central Jakarta. Anissa S. Febriana strolled down there and checked out the garments available and what’s on offer.

How does a soft gray flannel skirt, worn in the springtime by a Japanese woman who has long since grown old, find its way into the closet of a Jakarta teenager?

As vintage and retro become some of the most popular words in the language of the city’s beautiful people, the law of supply and demand explains it all.

On a street in front of Senen market in Central Jakarta, just before the clock strikes seven in the morning, thousands of secondhand garments are unpacked. A musty smell enters the air as vendors topple over large sacks of shirts, skirts, dresses and bed fittings, letting the contents spill out onto trestle tables.

“Cheap shirts, cheap skirts, Rp 5,000 each,” a vendor hollered.

“Sort it out yourself, yes, this is smuggled. Cheap shirts, cheap skirts,” another echoed.

Within a couple of hours, mothers and teenagers were rifling through the clothes, which sell for anything between the price of a glass of iced tea at a warung to that of a cup of chamomile at a hotel.

Most buyers come because they cannot afford mall prices. But there are also stylists for teen magazines, people searching for stage costumes and the owners of small boutiques.

“If you’re patient enough to browse through the stacks of clothes, you will find unique items unmatched even by expensive ‘branded’ boutiques,” said Khaila, a 20-year-old student at fashion school Esmod.

She lugs plastic bags full of clothes home from Senen and makes a couple of trips to the dry cleaner and some minor alterations. It’s worth the effort.

A vintage boutique in South Jakarta sold a skirt Khalia bought in Senen for Rp 5,000 for 10 times that price.
She is probably unaware the popularity of secondhand clothes is adversely affecting the lives of Indonesian garment workers.

Since early 2000, the rampant smuggling of secondhand garments had been slowly eating away at the domestic market “pie”. As of the end of last year, the Indonesian Textile Association reported that 70 companies had stop operating, leaving around 70,000 textile and garment workers jobless.

There are 1.2 million workers in total in the industry.

As a result of overlapping problems, the sector only grew by 1.5 percent in 2005, as against 4.3 percent in 2004.
The large sacks of secondhand garments found in Senen first entered the country legally, responding to the demand from consumers in the lower-income bracket. Later on, even an import ban could not stop the products from flooding the market.

Currently, some 250,000 large bales or sacks of garments, like shirts, skirts, jackets, trousers, suits and underwear, enter the country mostly through Tanjung Balai Asahan in Medan, North Sumatra.

“We used to get the goods from Tanjung Priok and Tanjung Perak too. But now the two ports are getting more strict,” said a wholesaler in Senen, who asked not to be named.

The illegal trading chain starts with the big bosses, who order and receive the bales of garments from their counterparts in Malaysia, Singapore, Korea and Japan, where the secondhand garments originate.

“Some say these are all donations. That’s why they can be sold at very low prices,” the wholesaler said.

The chain continues to smaller bosses or city agents, who sell the sacks to the wholesalers that supply stalls in the old Senen market.

Some 20 or more wholesalers in Senen supply more than 400 stall vendors.

This illegal distribution chain has its own national association, the Secondhand Garment Association, which claims to represent some 1,500 vendors nationwide.

The law of supply and demand has created a vicious circle in the journey of illegally traded secondhand garments. Not to mention the illegal levies that go into the pockets of government officials.

“The levies are increasing. Last year, we bought a bale for Rp 700,000, earlier this year the price went up to Rp 1.25 million because of the levies,” complained Roy Manalu, the owner of a T-shirt stall in the market.

“But, as long as the customers keep coming, we can stay in business,” he said.