Bernama, Malaysia
By Rohana Mustaffa
KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 8 (Bernama) — Aidilfitri gift hampers the contemporary Malaysian traditional offerings among friends and would-be friends have been conspicuously making its round since the fasting month of Ramadan enters its second week.
Hari Raya cookies, chocolates, dates, cakes, green packets and corporate premium gifts are among the favourite items stashed in the hampers, mostly wrapped attractively with messages of goodwill and friendship.
These hampers now come in exquisite packaging that could end up as collectors items such as specially-crafted boxes, rattan and bamboo baskets, mengkuang, lacquer and wooden containers.
Galeri Seri Endon which celebrated its 1st year anniversary on Aug 1 has a different idea in offering hampers to customers who prefer them as Aidilfitri corporate gifts.
This one-stop-shop batik centre has been customising gift of batiks in its Aidilfitri offerings. Each hampers offers one-of-a-kind exquisitely designed batik products handcrafted by winners of Piala Seri Endon.
Zamir Shukri, Marketing and Business Development Manager of Galeri Seri Endon said a selection of five hampers is available at a price between RM400 to RM2,000.
Each contains either silk scarf, Nori ceramics and cookies or silk tie and scarf, ceramics and cookies or silk material, ceramic and cookies or silk shawl, silk tie and cookies.
A ONE-STOP BATIK CENTRE
Into its second operational year, Zamir hopes that the Aidilfitri gifts will launch the gallerys promotions of more exquisite batik and Nori ceramic products into the market. There are other plans in store to meet the Galeri Seri Endons objectives in creating a one-stop batik centre and establishing a brand name for quality batik.
Currently, the gallery is also promoting a tea set of Noris bone china brand. The tea set comes in three designs and colours to add to its hand-painted 34 piece dinner set which is available in four designs. The sets maintain the Nyonya Kebaya designs on each of the item.
Zamir said the gallery with Yayasan Budi Penyayang will once again organise the Piala Seri Endon – a batik design competition with the aim of creating a platform to highlight and assist Malaysias batik-making talent – in November this year.
On hand to sponsor this years event is Ministry of Unity, Culture, Arts and Heritage, he said.
“The ministry is interested since we are the only foundation involved in this endeavour — promoting batik and creating market opportunities for designers and producers,” he told Bernama in an interview. The gallery is managed by Batik Guild Sdn Bhd, a wholly owned subsidiary of Yayasan Budi Penyayang.
HELPING DESIGNERS TO PROMOTE BATIK
Winners of the competition will be involved in designing a wide range of new batik products to be showcased at the gallery. A pool of 12 winners of the competition which has its roots back in 2003 has been working with the boutique.
“We are actually helping designers to promote and sell their products here. However, we have to maintain the quality since only the best are showcased at our gallery,” he said. The boutique has one in-house designer, Suhairi Marlina Shamsuddin, one of the winners of Piala Seri Endon in 2004.
The setting up of the gallery was the culmination of series of discussion between Piala Seri Endon alumni and the Yayasan Budi Penyayang early last year. It was named after the late Datin Seri Endon Mahmood and the gallery was to be a batik centre in which the best batik products are displayed and branded under one roof.
Zamir said the gallery has so far joined several promotional campaigns to promote batik including at the recent Malaysia Week in London.
“Whatever we get be they orders and jobs to produce batik uniforms and corporate gifts are out-sourced to the designers. We also pair them up with overseas designers to design the materials and consequently help create them into fashions,” said the 31-year old manager.
He said one of the challenges that the designers face was to produce a good batik in a short timeline.
“We are not in the business of printing batik. All products are hand-made so the difficulty is to meet such demand.”
MAINTAINING THE EXCLUSIVITY OF BATIK
Since it is only a year-old, Zamir feels that the gallery needs lots of promotion. Fortunately he has an array of ideas to work on.
“However, we are not going to the malls since we want to maintain the exclusivity of the boutique to our clients, to make them feel at home while browsing through the products on display,” he said.
The ambience is impeccable for that purpose since the boutique is located at the ground floor of Epicure 1, Bukit Damansara. It offers ready-to-wear batik, soft furnishing, corporate gifts, crafts, home decoration items, tailoring and batik interior design services.
“Our market hinges on the neighborhood but of course we wish to have more clients, targeting at the middle income and higher income group from all age.
“We are also planning to establish our outlets in the states probably by middle of next year. Like I said we are not the producers and we do have no competitors. We promote designers and their batik products. It is the designers who produce and compete with each other,” he stressed.
Zamir is pleased that batik awareness is on the rise since the introduction of Piala Seri Endon competition and promotions by the gallery and the foundation. To date the number of batik designers have increased and so were those buying and wearing.
Zamir also wishes to help the designers through Penyayang to obtain grants which are available from the government to help them in their endeavour since going on individually was quite a problem.
His wish is not impossible since it is known that the foundation collaborates with several government agencies in promoting batik and even spearheading research into natural dyes with available grant from the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation last year.
— BERNAMA
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