We were founded in 1989, beginning with OEM manufacturing producing many international brands and then in 1997 we started to create our own brand, Polygon. Our expectations grew and we sought to become a regional player in South East Asia and Australia. This began with brand building and developing retail channels.

In Indonesia, bicycles were only seen as a mode of transport so we had to change people’s perceptions and help them see bikes as a lifestyle product. If it is seen as a lifestyle product we can offer higher quality and more expensive products.

In the last two years we have entered into the international market beginning in Europe with Eurobike and in 2013 we entered the American market.

During the crisis of 1998, we benefited from the drop in the Indonesian currency and gained greater income from our OEM manufacturing. We used these funds to develop our market further in Indonesia. The buying power in Indonesia also dropped and so we had to go shop to shop changing people’s perceptions of lifestyle products as our bikes were priced at around 1 million RP whereas other bikes were only 300,000 RP.

For the future we are focusing on changing people’s habits and the mind-set of Indonesian people. We have created a community and are working with the government to promote bicycles as a green method of transport to reduce pollution and to promote a healthy lifestyle. People do not have time to exercise and so instead, they could use their bicycle to go to work. We began in suburban areas of Jakarta suited to bicycle riding such as Serpong and Cibubur. In Jakarta there is now a car free day on Sundays. Also, we have developed a relationship with various real estate developers to encourage the use of bicycles at their developments.

We are just trying out the market in Europe at the moment. South East Asia is our home base and this is where we are concentrating our efforts and where we want to succeed first. More than 80% of our business is in OEM manufacturing and we export to Europe but we are concerned about the market there given the slowdown. We therefore want to focus more on our brand in South East Asian markets such as Singapore, Malaysia and Australia. At this moment in time, Europe is only a bonus.

In terms of partnerships, we are interested in working with partners for distribution in our target markets as opposed to investment and capital. We cooperate with international brands and we learn from them about brand building and technology so this type of cooperation is the most interesting to us.

We face many challenges in this area; products from Indonesia are not generally seen as high quality. However this was also the case in other markets such as Japan and Taiwan; at first their manufactured products were not seen as high quality but step by step they improved and are now seen as markets with some of the best production quality available worldwide. South Korea is another example of this trend and so I believe Indonesia can undergo the same transformation over time.

We want bicycles to be a part of people’s lifestyles and so we encourage people to start cycling as much as possible.