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SURYAMALANG.com, Blitar – Kampung Batok Tanjungsari or Tanjungsari coconut shell village is located in Tanjungsari, Sukorejo, Blitar East Java.
The place is known as the village of coconut shell handicrafts. Various handicrafts made from waste shell or coconut shell were produced in the village.
Ismarofi (43) was arguably one of the leaders who made the Tanjungsari coconut shell Village or Kampung Batok Tanjungsari the Batok village as a well-known place.
The father of two children was the first pioneered making shell handycrafts in the environment. Now, shell handycraft is one of the superior products in the city.
"When I started this business, I just thought I wanted to make a craft giving benefits the surrounding community," said Rofi at his home, RT 2 RW 9, Tanjungsari Village, Sukorejo District, Blitar East Java.
Rofi made his house as a place for producing various kinds of shell handmade. The area was from the backyard of the house to the terrace of the house. There was a number of workers were making crafts made from shells.
Behind the house, you could see one worker cutting the shell into small pieces. On the side yard, workers were lacquering and drying half-finished crafts. On the terrace of the side and front of the house, there are some women were arranging shells into bags.
He mentioned, "I had several types of handicrafts from shells, but the main ones were craft bags made from shells," .
Rofi began to producing coconut shell craft since 1999. He used capital Rp 2 million in debt to bought tools such as saws and drills to start and made shell bags. For more than three months, he learned how to cut and drill shells so they could be assembled into bags.
Rofi learned to make self-taught shell craft. His experience as a carpenter became the capital of polishing shell waste into crafts of high artistic value. At that time, he worked on the shell craft by himself.
Although he has succeeded in producing his shell bags, he still has problems in marketing. At that time, not many people knew about crafting shell bags. Then six months later, his homemade shell bags were sold well. He marketed the shell bag to souvenir merchants who used to stand at the Bung Karno Cemetery.
He told, "The initial idea was to make shell bags was come from neighbors. There were neighbors who used to sell souvenirs at Bung Karno's tomb. They had merchandise in shell bags. From there, I was inspired making craft bags of shells,".
He acknowledged the process of making a shell bag took a long process. The longest process were the cutting and drilling stage. After being cut and drilled, the formed shell was mashed using sandpaper, then lacquered.
After that just paste it in the media that has been prepared. To make a shell bag, it required other additives such as paperboard, cloth, and zippers.
"It must be patient to make shell bags," he said.
His tenacity and persistence of making the craft shell bags pay off. Now the craft of his shell bag is growing rapidly.
Orders for shell bags from outside the region continue to flow every month, starting from Bali, Jakarta, Yogyakarta, Aceh, Sulawesi, to Kalimantan Indonesia.
Technology development makes the marketing of shell bags reaching overseas at present. He markets his batok or coconut shell bag through social media. As a result, many Indonesian workers abroad are ordering shell bags in their places and reselling it in overseas.
The countries are from Hong Kong, Singapore, the Netherlands, even to Russia.
The production of shell bags continues to grow. Everyday, he produces about 50-75 shell bags. The number of workers also increased to 43 people. Almost the workers are his neighbors. Not only bags, but he also produces key chains, tissue boxes, and lighting places.
The price of the craft of Rofi's shell bag is affordable, it’s started from Rp. 50,000 to Rp. 100,000 per seed. With the initial capital of Rp 2 million, now the turnover of the business of Rofi's handicraft bag reaches Rp 50 million per month. The Turnover has not been deducted with employee salaries, raw material purchases, and also other production costs.
Rofi is grateful that his shell craft business is growing rapidly. However, he is more grateful to create job opportunities for unemployed neighbors. The development of its business automatically creat new job vacancy.
"At least my initial intention of handicraft giving benefits the surrounding community has already been realized. This was my alms in afterlife," he said.
(sha)
Translator : Sarah