However, some shops in the famous establishment are now out of business, while the rest are struggling to compete with cheaper and consumer friendly services offered by online wedding invitation vendors.

Sigit, one of the shop owners in Tebet Market, said he had seen a decline in business in recent years.

“Since online wedding invitation shops became popular, my revenue has decreased by almost 50 percent. Each month I could only get seven to eight orders, with each order ranging from 300 to 2,000 wedding invitation cards,” he told The Jakarta Post on Saturday.

Sigit said he had to lower the price of the invitation cards to compete with online merchants. As a result, the profit he gained from every customer order had dropped to Rp 500,000 (US$35) from Rp 800,000.

Another vendor, Tri Wahyudi, who has been selling wedding invitation cards in the market for nine years, said the trend of sending wedding invitations online had reduced his orders.

“Since people can send their wedding invitation through WhatsApp messenger or other social media platforms, people are ordering fewer wedding invitation cards. I can no longer set a minimum order quantity. I would now accept orders even when customers request to print less than 100 cards,” he said.

Yudi, his nickname, said in the past he could earn Rp 800,000 to Rp 1 million from each order. Now, his profits have significantly declined.

Despite the success of fellow merchants who had turned to online service, Yudi was still reluctant to follow suit.

“If my shop goes online, I would need to lower my products’ prices to compete with other merchants. By doing so, I would not be able pay my employees’ salary,” he said.

According to Tebet Market management staffer Kusnadi, as many as 10 shops in the market have closed down in the past years.

Wedding invitation stores in Tebet Market are not the only ones suffering from online competition, as a similar condition can also be found at Senen Market in Central Jakarta, where most offset printing businesses are located.

“My earnings have been decreasing by around 10 percent since digitization started flourishing,” one of the shop owners said as quoted by Antara last month.

In contrast to brick and mortar wedding invitation stores that have started to lose their glory, online stores are thriving among millennial customers. Thanks to convenient services and huge networks, many online wedding invitation stores have grown exponentially in less than a year.

Hana Khairunnisa, owner of the Bandung-based BECREATIVE Indonesia wedding invitation store, said her business had grown tremendously even though she just opened her store three months ago.

“Each month I receive 12 to 20 orders from all around Indonesia, each order ranges from 100 to 1,500 invitation cards,” she said.

Hana said she used third party printing services so she did not need a lot of capital to run her online store. Promoting her stores on a number of social media platforms, each month she claimed that she could gain Rp 10 million to Rp15 million in profits.

Linda Kurtanti, owner of online wedding invitation store Gravist souvenir based in Malang, East Java, said she had received orders from all around Indonesia and even from England after opening her store around eight months ago.

Each month she could sell 15,000 to 20,000 wedding invitations with each invitation costing Rp 3,500 to Rp 25,000.

Combining offset printing and laser printing technology, Linda said she could gain Rp 10 million to Rp 12 million in profit per month.

Adizti Lintang, a 27-year-old woman from Denpasar, Bali, is among the millennial brides who have opted to order wedding invitation cards online.

She said ordering wedding invitations online was very convenient as it was cheaper and she could easily look at the catalogues and choose the design by phone.

“The owner gave me a mock-up sample first before printing all of my invitation cards so that I could make corrections, if any. And it’s around 15 percent cheaper compared to offline merchants,” she said. (nal)

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