Indonesia’s TikTok sellers do roaring trade in hijab, handbags

Like many in his village, Inggit Pambudi and his wife Mudya Ayu earn a living making and selling headscarves.

The couple are part of the thousands of home industries in West Java’s district of Cicalengka, known as “Kampung Hijab”, or “Hijab Village”.

Cicalengka specialises in modest wear, a highly sought-after commodity in Muslim-majority Indonesia.

Most of Cicalengka’s production caters to brick-and-mortar wholesale markets across the Southeast Asian country but Pambudi and his wife count on a more modern marketing strategy. As TikTok user Hijab mudy mudy, the couple sell their products in livestreams on the popular video app 24 hours a day.

“We don’t even have any physical store,” Pambudi, 25, told Al Jazeera. “When I learned that I can livestream and sell my products on TikTok, I thought that it’s a good opportunity for us.”

TikTok is wildly popular in Indonesia, the world’s fourth-most populous country with more than 275 million people. As of July, the Chinese social media platform reported 106.9 million adult users in Indonesia, making the country the app’s second-biggest market after the United States.

TikTok – initially launched as a music video platform-cum-social network – entered Indonesia in 2017. After authorities briefly banned the app over content deemed pornographic and blasphemous, it began storming the country’s lucrative e-commerce scene in 2021, following the launch of its livestreaming e-commerce function during Ramadan.

During the holy month, the app’s viewership peaks higher than usual as many Muslims stay awake into the early hours to eat their last meal of the day before fasting.

It was during Ramadan last year that TikTok reached out to Pambudi.

“Someone contacted me; he’s like a ‘relationship manager’ for TikTok. He told me that I could do live shopping on the platform,” Pambudi said.

At the time, Pambudi was selling roughly 1,000 headscarves every month. He was not unfamiliar with the world of internet shopping. Since 2018, he had been trying out different online marketplaces to sell Hijab mudy mudy’s products, which retail from about half a cent to $3 apiece.

Live shopping, however, was uncharted territory.

“The relationship manager trained us on how to do livestreaming. From how to use the features, choosing the backgrounds, the lighting, the equipment, and what to say to customers,” Pambudi said. “The whole training took us around five months.”

With Pambudi behind the camera and Ayu on screen, the couple began with a few hours of livestreaming every day in the morning and afternoon.

However, they soon discovered that nighttime streaming brought them more sales.

“We tried going live after 8pm. That’s when people have returned from work, done their Isha (evening prayer) and usually, they’re just at home relaxing while scrolling on their phones,” Pambudi said.

“The sales were really good. People were buying. In the beginning, we finished our session by 11pm. But then we decided to continue until Fajr (morning prayer) time, and the responses were excellent.”

Pambudi said early morning before dawn is usually their peak time, with hundreds of viewers typically joining the livestream. During special events like National Online Shopping Day, viewership can jump to the thousands.

Pambudi’s business now sells up to 30,000 headscarves a month – a 30-fold rise from his pre-livestreaming days.

“I now have 10 hosts taking turns doing the livestreaming,” he said. “We have three shifts every day, eight hours each.”

Live shopping is a growing business in Indonesia.

In a recent survey by market research firm Ipsos, 71 percent of Indonesian consumers said they had participated in live shopping events, with 56 percent reporting making purchases.

For Indonesia’s nearly 65 million small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) – 98 percent of which are micro-enterprises with less than 300 million Indonesia rupiahs ($19,500) in annual sales – the trend could open doors to new customers amid a government push towards digitalisation.

About 21 million Indonesian SMBs, or 32 percent of the total, market their products at online marketplaces, according to Semuel Abrijani Pangerapan, director-general of Information and Communication Technology Applications at Indonesia’s Ministry of Communication and Information Technology.

By 2024, the government hopes to get at least 30 million SMBs online.

-al jazeera