Abdul Aziz Surya Buana
IPMI International Business School
Amelia Naim Indrajaya
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Fleure International gives an opportunity to unemployed people in rural areas and provides training and education so they can become a skilled worker in the garment industry. In the end, most of them joined Fleure International but they are also given the opportunity to develop their own business or join another factory.
Fleure International aims to develop human resources in Probolinggo City for all different cultural backgrounds. Fleure International is focusing on the less educated people such as a street singer, street boy or housewife and gives them education as long as they have the willingness to work. The education program is mostly in the garment and fashion industry like the training on how to sew, how to make a design and how to make a fashion product. .
By providing this education, it is not obligatory that the people should join Fleure International as an employee. They have the choice if they want to develop their own business, or to join another factory. However, in the end most of the people prefer to join Fleure International.
In addition, the target of human resource development is equal between women and men. In fact, Fleure International is targeting the house wife to be trained so they will have more skill in the garment industry.
The inspiration came due to the high unemployment rate in Indonesia and also the high rate of urbanization from rural areas to the big cities in Indonesia. By migrating from villages/rural areas to big cities to get a job opportunity, they actually spend more for living costs and at the same time they actually get less earnings. Fleuri, CEO of Fleure International, also said “I am trying to provide more opportunity to Indonesians in the villages so that they have the same opportunity with the people who are working in the cities”.
By creating more job opportunity in villages, the people in villages can stay there and build their villages. They can do farming and work at the same time. As also found in Fleure International, most of the employees are also farmers who own chicken and lamb for their own farm. If the villagers migrate to a big city, they cannot do farming and the economy in the village would not grow.
In addition, creating a job opportunity to Indonesian people in rural areas is one of the solution to the social economic problem in the villages and gives a benefit to the poor.
The major impact of the innovation is eliminating 2% of unemployment problem in Probolinggo City. And for the short run, more people are starting to do the entrepreneurial industry and small scale business in the garment industry. With this development it is supporting the company and the customers to grow together through collaboration. For example, sometimes a customer wants to order a garment in a small quantity and most of the garment industry do not want to take small orders. By a collaboration with a small scale business, this order could be accepted.
For the long term, doing training and development of people could create new garment cluster in Probolinggo and this could be expanded to another city in Indonesia and absorb more employment in larger scale. As to Fleure International, this development also creates new opportunity to diversify the business to other sectors such as trading, business consultation and also the restaurant business.
The Innovation, by providing education and training to the less-educated people, makes Fleure International grow bigger. For example, most of the people that take the education and training joined Fleure International as a loyal employee which increased the retention period for the employment. On the other hand, the people that create their own small business could become a partner in the garment industry to support Fleure International's business.
In addition, with the concept of local community empowerment, Fleure International could get strategic partners and investors from overseas because the company could bring additional value.
The benefit for local society is reducing the unemployment rate up to 2% in Probolinggo City and also reducing the urbanization from rural areas to big cities. In addition, creating a new garment industry cluster in Probolinggo makes the local economy better with a multiplier effect. The people which were farmers could generate a new source of income without relinquishing their farm and moving to bigger cities to get more proper jobs. Instead, they could do a factory job from the morning to the afternoon and still take care of their farm afterwards.
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Fleuré International is a diversified creative industries company which focus on any kind of garments, genuine leather clothing manufacturing, clothing brand retail business, fashion related products, tourism & social charity foundation. As a reliable international company in global creative industries, they already export their product to 25 countries in the world. Beside going global they are also fighting poverty, unemployment and socioeconomic issues in the local area.
