Gantibaju.com: Indonesia's Very Own Threadless

This time I am going to talk about gantibaju.com, Indonesia's very own threadless. But before I go there, I will first explain what threadless is. Threadless is an online-apparel site where they combine e-commerce and clothing lines. On this site, designers can submit t-shirts designs. The submitted designs will be sorted and put in a competition where the public can vote on their favorite t-shirts. Only a small percentage of submitted designs are selected for printing and sold through the site.

Gantibaju.com is basically the Indonesian version of threadless, but slightly different. Gantibaju (means: “change clothes/get dressed”) was founded in September 2009 by Aria Rajasa, Anang Pradipta, and Setyagus Sucipto.  In gantibaju.com, the submitted designs need to have Indonesian elements in them. There are a lot of “Indonesian elements” that designers can use; it can be about Indonesian fairytale, folklore, heroes, some superstitious stuff, and of course Indonesian's very own “Batik” (Indonesian traditional cloth made by a wax-resist dyeing technique, which was listed by UNESCO as one of the “world intangible cultural heritage” in 2009). By restricting the rule to “Indonesian designs only”, gantibaju.com encourages young Indonesians to be proud of wearing “made in Indonesia” products (source: e27). 

So far, gantibaju.com has gotten more or less 15.000 members and more than 1.500 designs submissions. They have also been listed as Asia's Top 10 Apps by e27 and have received awards as Best Rising Star and Best User Generated Content at The SparxUp Awards 2010 (a web competition event for digital startup in Indonesia). Very good achievements for a starter, I would say!

Payment Method

Bank transfer is the only available payment method used in gantibaju.com. As I mentioned in “Indonesian Groupon Clones” article, most people in Indonesia still prefer to use bank transfers to credit cards and the transfers are mostly done from ATMs. Credit card penetration (growing, but is still relatively low), widespread instances of financial fraud, and no central credit bureau are thought to be the caused why Indonesians still prefer to use bank transfers to do payments (source: Quora).

Gantibaju.com's Usability

The only thing that bothers me from gantibaju.com is the payment procedure. Here are the steps:

1. After choosing the products, costumers fill in the form (name, address, etc) or send their confirmation emails to halo@gantibaju.com
2. Transfer the money to gantibaju.com's bank account.
3. If the bank transfer succeeded, then costumers have to send a text message or call to confirm that payment has been done.
4. Orders will be processed after confirmation emails have been received by gantibaju.com.

In my opinion, these procedures are too complicated; maybe it should be put in simpler steps:

• The “order via email” option is unnecessary and should be removed, for gantibaju.com already has the “online order form” on the site.
• Gantibaju.com should find a way to track the payments without customers having to send/call for payment confirmations
• English site version is not available on gantibaju.com. In my opinion, it is a pity, because they should have an English site version if they want to step up to international markets and I am sure some foreigners would be interested in, for example, batik prints. 

FYI, threadless has added Indonesia to their shipping list since March 2011, so gantibaju.com needs to step up their game otherwise they will lose their fans to threadless. But overall, credits have to be given to gantibaju.com for their original idea of presenting Indonesian's heritage on t-shirts.