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Melissa Sunjaya: Taking 'Tulisan' to the world
Melissa Sunjaya
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Melissa Sunjaya. JP/ Juliana Harsiant
The store in Dharmawangsa Square, South Jakarta, stood out with its colorful products adorning its white-painted background.
Tulisan products are not only colorful, but are so obviously well-designed that they could double as chic decorations for the store that sells illustrated bags, accessories and stationery that are now sought after fashion items among young women.
Melissa Sunjaya, the owner of Tulisan, said the enterprise was her endeavor to make a dream come true: to have a store that sells good quality handcrafted products made in Indonesia.
She had this dream long before she established Tulisan and continued nurturing her dream when she went to a design school in Switzerland, worked as a brand strategist in the United States. Not until 2010 did her dream come true in the form of Tulisan, established together with her mother, Didi Hersubeno.
Tulisan is a creative group that produces handcrafted goods illustrated by Melissa's works as the signature design. Didi, an interior designer and an entrepreneur, helped Melissa build the 'concept store' and gave advice about the types of goods sold.
Tulisan's initial products were bags, tea towels, cooking aprons and cards. Later, Tulisan added boxes, toiletries bags and fashion articles to their product line.
Tulisan's products are high quality with unique illustrations that appeal to young women, even though the prices are relatively high: US$77 to $137 for their bags and totes.
Although the products are also targeted at foreigners living in Indonesia or abroad, Melissa picked an Indonesian word to name her store, tulisan, meaning writing. Would foreigners find it hard to say the name? 'Apparently not,' the mother of two said. 'The name Tulisan is instead appealing to foreign buyers. I give a special description to the pronunciation and the story behind the name.'
Melissa said she picked Tulisan because behind every product she made there was a story. The word tulisan is a symbol every individual leaves when she shares the story of her life.
'This unique meaning allows each customer to feel as if she reads the story of the product's maker,' the 39-year-old said.
Each illustration on Tulisan's products has its own story and until now there have been 20 stories adapted into illustrations for Tulisan. Among the stories are 'The Secret Garden of Admiral Kasarung', 'Pepe and the Flying Balloon' and 'Les Papillons de Victor' (Victor and the Butterflies). The latest story is collaborative effort between Melissa and Virginie Kasse, a French writer who once lived in Indonesia.
'One day we met. She loved my illustrations and wanted to build a story on them. Hence the collaboration and later the small children book, Victor and The Butterflies and Tulisan's limited product bearing the illustrations from the book.'
The store also sells limited copies of the book, she said.
Melissa's exposure to Western Europe through her travels allowed her to be familiar with the Western world's classic literature, adding a European-Scandinavian feel to her illustrations. She tried to make the illustrations more Indonesian by using batik painting techniques. The results are modern illustrations, consisting mostly of flowers, that represent the best of both worlds.
To achieve her story-telling mission, Melissa always sketched once, keeping the errors intact. 'I have never erase my mistakes when I sketch. The mistakes I make the works unique and communicate the feelings of the maker,' she went on.
Uniqueness is not Melissa's only principle. Since the beginning, her dream was to make handcrafted, high-quality items with designs that are unusual. Thus, she makes sure every product is made from high-quality materials and executed meticulously. 'At first, Tulisan was run by me and few creative staffers working in a garage. Now I have 20 creative staff, and the demand is going up.'
Even though her products speak 'modern', Melissa herself has a penchant for the philosophy of entrepreneurship from two centuries ago. 'At that time, a company invested a lot of time to master a process. It took seven years of apprenticeship in a company to master one skill,' she said. The results are high-quality, long lasting articles that carry a classic design.
Tulisan wants to achieve that; she wants her products to last for years. She chooses the canvas for her products and her printing techniques very carefully. 'I use a silk screen technique or known as sablon,' she said. 'This technique is now rarely used, exists only in a few places, and has better results than other printing techniques.'
She did not have much initial capital, she said. But she made sure she had the best canvases; she bought them in a store selling surplus exported goods in Kota, West Jakarta. 'I spent almost all of my capital on this material. But I was happy because this material created the best results for Tulisan's products,' Melissa said. To make her products water proof, she coated the canvas. 'So that Tulisan products can accompany the women who buy them for a long time.'
Melissa also started her enterprise with vintage equipment. 'I started it with my grandmother's Singer. Some of the closets I use for display at the store are hers too.'
It was obvious she picked her old stuff carefully, to represent the quality of their time, which was a rare find these days. She also hoped her products would last a long time to be used by following generations. 'Someday, I would be proud to see a teenager wearing a Tulisan product that previously belonged to her mother,' she said.
The quality of her products gave her confidence to penetrate international markets through her online shop: tulisan.com. This is part of her dream: to see Indonesian-made products accepted by international markets.
Through the smartly designed tulisan.com, Melissa received orders from many different countries. The international buyers usually discovered her products through friends or families who bought Tulisan products in Indonesia. The online shop helped Melissa to decide an offline strategy; it helped her profile potential customers and decide where to open international showrooms. Tulisan also has offline showrooms in Hong Kong, Los Angeles and Singapore.
'It is also my dream to see Tulisan products worn with pride by people in many countries,' she said.
