Despite the decreasing popularity of festivals today, pop-up market event Brightspot has brought financial innovation to the latest event to promote local hipster fashion brands, Brightspot x Jenius Live Market of the Future.

In partnership with Jenius, a product of BTPN Bank, Brightspot offered on-the-spot purchases through the Jenius application on their smartphones.

The four-day event in Senayan City Mall, from September 29 to October 2, brought together 137 merchants spread over two giant tents. The first tent was mainly for fashion retail products and the second was dedicated for food and beverages, a virtual store, and two corners for workshops and live entertainment.

Local and International hipster fashion brands joined the event, from the natural dyed batik of Kana Goods, the ceramic jewelry of Karjewellery, to Italian sneakers Superga.

While the food and beverages tent was packed with local delicacies from Hokkaido Cheese Cake, fine Indonesian chocolate Pipiltin Cocoa, and also food tenants such as lamb-bowl favorite The Halal Boys and Indonesian homemade rice box Suwar Suwir.

Workshops and talk shows were also held with some notable local influencers and artists such as fashion stylist Ajeng Svastiari and speakers from Instagram, and Indoestri designers’ studio.

Vania Desianti who frequents Brightspot every year said that he always enjoyed the event.

“I like about this event because many of the brands are displaying their latest collections that you can’t find anywhere else. I think if I have to add for the next Brightspot, I hope they will give discount for the products here,” she said.

Most of the fashion goods in Brightspot will eventually be displayed or are already in the collection of The Goods Dept stores, a company which belongs to Brightspot founder Anton Wirjono.

Although some people at the event mentioned that some products were quite pricey, Anton disagreed.

He is aware that urban Jakartans also like to buy big international brands like ZARA or H&M but he believes that local brands can compete with them.

“What we provide here are high-quality local and some niche international brands that you can’t find anywhere else. I believe these local brands can compete with those big brands, and are maybe even better. That’s why I don’t think it is too expensive.”

Anton and his sister, Cynthia Wirjono who has been consistently supporting the local brands believe that they need to keep on supporting the locals through curated platforms, both Brightspot and the Goods Dept.

“I believe that curating products is our responsibility, we set the standards to prove that local products have the same quality as international brands. Now the same applies when we curate our bank partner.”

Guests could walk into the Brightspot event for free after they downloaded the Jenius application.

“We hope Jenius will be a tool to help the digitally savvy generation manage their finance. They need to have a smart and secure system without having to compromise on their lifestyle,” said Djemi Suhendra, deputy president director of BTPN.

The app has user-friendly features, especially the trouble-free process of creating an account and transferring money.

There are seven Jenius main features that are tailored to youth needs: from automatic savings via Dream Saver, transfer request system Pay Me, username-based transfer system Send it, automatic splitting bill system Split Bill, finger print based authorization One Touch, card management system Card Centre, to the easy-to-remember username $Cashtag.

Anton Wirjono said the application helped him to be more organized through the purchase history feature that users can check anytime.

“My favourite feature is the Pay Me feature – you can remind someone to pay their debt via SMS and they can directly transfer the money through the app,” Anton added.

The consecutive four-day events attracted more than 50,000 visitors, lower than last year’s record of 70,000. However, this year’s partnership with Jenius has pushed the pop-up market to foster the first digital banking app for the youth.

Despite Jenius’ user-friendly features, some visitors were still wary of using it. Visitor Vania Desianti admitted that she had not tried using the app because she was still concerned about the safety of the system.

Addressing such concerns, Djemi said Jenius had adopted the latest technology and encryption system and it was under the surveillance of the Indonesian Financial Services Authority.

“We are aware that as this is new for Indonesians, that is why we call it Bank Reinvented. And we want people to know that the system is very transparent, no hidden transactions. You only pay for what you use,” Djemi said.

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