Jakarta, Indonesia – Tanah Abang is the most significant textile and outfits current market in Southeast Asia, well-recognized among traders all around Asia and as much as Africa. But organization these times is not fantastic, with foot targeted visitors down by fifty percent as opposed with prior to the pandemic.
In accordance to stallholders at the practically 300-12 months-old industry in Central Jakarta, TikTok Shop, the e-commerce aspect of the world’s most preferred video-sharing app, is squarely to blame.
“TikTok is seriously undesirable for my enterprise,” Hairun Nisa, whose family members have offered men’s relaxed clothes at Tanah Abang for 20 a long time, explained to Al Jazeera.
“It’s different to other sorts of e-commerce due to the fact, in TikTok, folks sell their merchandise using online video and can interact with customers in authentic-time.”
“It’s not like the old times when this industry was constantly crowded,” added Roni Waskito, who has bought footwear at Tanag Abang given that 2010 and who also blames TikTok for the drop in trade.
TikTok Shop amassed 6 million sellers in Indonesia inside of a year of its start in 2021 and final year captured about 5 per cent of Indonesia’s booming $52bn e-commerce.
The e-commerce system had been on focus on to increase product sales by about 350 per cent this yr, according to Singapore research organization Momentum Operates – until eventually the Indonesian federal government banned it on October 5.
Jakarta has justified the ban as required to defend the country’s 64 million micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), which includes merchants at marketplaces this sort of as Tanah Abang.
Indonesian Trade Minister Zulkifli Hasan has accused the platform of