Jakarta, CNN Indonesia —
Putri Kartika (27 years) never thought that the ‘coercion’ of the pandemic covid-19 made him successful in starting a cake business with the boboeats brand which he had been dreaming of since the last few years. Especially, small business This can be started with a minimum capital of around IDR 500 thousand from personal savings.
In fact, he admitted that his financial condition was ‘troublesome’ at that time. This is because the retail company where he works suddenly cut employee salaries by up to 65 percent due to cash flow difficulties.
Understandably, the retail sector has been quite affected by the pandemic, especially when the government imposed Large-Scale Social Restrictions (PSBB). At that time, the mall’s operations were closed, so sales of retail goods were like ‘parachuting’ in an instant.
“Just when it was a pandemic, my office cut my salary quite a lot from April 2020 and cut it up to 65 percent. So, yes, all selling to cover the cut salary,” said Putri to CNNIndonesia.com, Sunday (24/10).
But who would have thought, the ‘coercion’ of the salary cut during the pandemic would actually produce money for Putri. In fact, the turnover is not kidding, the highest reaches Rp. 12 million in a month.
“Once upon a time, there were so many of them, their turnover even exceeded the total salary full me,” he added.
Putri suspects that this success happened because the pandemic gave rise to several new trends in society. Starting from being happy to try new food so you don’t get bored at home, wanting to share with others through food deliveries because you can’t meet, to being happy to share uploads on social media.
“Fortunately, the people who bought my cake liked it and generally posted on Instagram they continued to give positive reviews, so many people were curious to try it too,” he said.
Not only that, digital marketing options seem to make it easier for potential buyers. They only need to order cakes via short messages on Instagram or Whatsapp.
After that, payment transactions can be completed easily via bank transfer or digital wallet. Then, the cake will be made through a pre-order system and sent to the address specified on the promised date.
Later, the flood of orders made Putri add her cake marketing channel, namely ke e-commerce Tokopedia and Shopee. This step was taken to accommodate the requests of several subscribers in order to get a discount on shipping costs (postage) from e-commerce.
Not only Putri, the pandemic also seems to have forced Sarah Diana Oktavia to demand herself to be ‘literate’ and go digital, even though the effort was quite successful before trying it marketplace.
The reason is, the business with the Roti Eneng and Sepiring Stories brands that he built was immediately stuck in a difficult time when the corona virus outbreak broke out in Indonesia.
This happens because customers cannot come to the physical store it owns in the Gandaria area, South Jakarta. Finally, he tried marketing online via Tokopedia.
“Honestly at the beginning of the pandemic was the toughest time, at that time the PSBB and we had to close, this is what made us try marketplace, “said Sarah.
“But really, when we are observant and want to learn new things, at the beginning of the pandemic I was forced to adapt, to develop my business digitally, and now the profits are big. Roti Eneng itself has added another kitchen because our orders in the marketplace turned out to be very high,” he continued.
In fact, not only did she add a kitchen and get orders to increase, Sarah could also open up new job opportunities for the community. Because, he also added several employees to take care of the operation of his new kitchen.
In total, there are currently 26 employees working in the business. From this he saw that digital marketing apparently not only provides convenience and benefits, but can also provide empowerment benefits to the community through employment.
“Apparently platform digital does not reduce human resources because it is digital one of the tools, but human touch It’s still important, even though all orders are digital,” he said.
Sarah said her success would not have happened if she had not been forced by the pandemic. Because, this makes him inevitably have to learn new things, namely the marketing of bread through marketplace.
In fact, selling on marketplace he had never imagined before, especially in terms of taking care of ad design, arranging storefronts, and so on. Fortunately, said Sarah, he was helped by the party marketplace because they want to communicate with the seller.
“At that time I worked with marketplacenya, I discussed, what can they offer, what are the advantages, keep going platform them, I can advertise like what, tools marketing what can I use, can help me market the product so that it is known to more people. It turned out to be helpful,” he explained.
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