Syanaz, the 45-year-old founder and owner of Semarang-based fashion company Rorokenes, which specializes in a wide array of bags made from leather and recycled wood, flew to Moscow with fellow entrepreneurs from Central Java to showcase products at the Indonesia Festival, held from Aug. 2 to 4 in the Russian capital.

She said the Central Java administration, in partnership with the regional branch of Bank Indonesia and the Central Java Industry and Trade Agency, supported the promotion of 13 high-quality products in Russia. The products included leather bags, furniture, coffee, jamu (traditional herbal medicine), gula sarang semut (red sugar resembling an ant’s nest), traditional snacks and batik, she said.

“The airport authorities were apparently suspicious of the handbags, which I would showcase at the festival,” she told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.

Every businessperson from Central Java – except Syanaz – passed security checkpoints at the Russian airport with no problems. Syanaz said her luggage caught the authorities’ attention because they thought her Rorokenes leather bags were premium products that costed hundreds of millions of dollar apiece.

The customs officers’ suspicion of her leather bags confused Syanaz, who later explained that her products were far from being the expensive, high-end fashion items that the authorities thought they were.

“Actually, my leather bags only cost around Rp 1 million [US$70.47] apiece, while my burlap bags only cost Rp 150,000 apiece; I had planned to give some of them away for free as goodie bags at the event,” the mother of two told the Post.

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