Indah Sari Maryani
IPMI International Business School
Amelia Naim Indrajaya
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Tunanstore is a cloth diapers producer in Indonesia. They started the business back in 2010 and have maintained their focus on cloth diapers as well as educating the market about the dangers caused by disposable diapers, to the environment and to children's well-being.
Sri Kriscahyani Wulandari (people call her Wulan) is the owner of Tunanstore.com who started her business back in 2010. She was working in one of largest telco companies in Indonesia when she started the business. Its focus since the beginning is to provide a solution for affordable cloth diapers in Indonesia. She named her brand ‘Pempem’ cloth diapers and the brand is now popular amongst online-moms around the Jabotabek area.
The product is receiving good acceptance from the market, as the urban lifestyle shifts to eco-friendly and healthy products. Especially with the rise of internet users and online-forums created by groups of environmentalist, health conscious moms, working moms etc, educating the dangers of disposable diapers and the damage it causes to the environment can now reach a broader audience. She ended up creating her own distribution channel (group of distributors and retailers) from her online portal since then.
The product design has been evolving throughout the year with feedback from customers and her networking agents. Currently major production is on pocket diapers and hybrid cloth diapers. A pocket diaper is designed with pocket that allowed you to insert an absorbent pad or pre-fold between the inner and outer layer. Microfiber or Bamboo works as an insert or pad that is an absorbency layer to keep it from leakage. The pant is designed with 2 parts, inner and outer, the outer is made of polyester lining with waterproof and breathable materials to keep the outer dry. The inner is made of corduroy-like material that is moisture wicking and soft for baby’s skin.
The pants are also well designed, so they can be used on a baby weighted 3–12 kgs, and can be adjusted with snap buttons or Velcro, depending on the product.
The diapers are sold with a wet bag, to hold the dirty diapers, to help travelling moms. The store also provides lifetime repair warranty.
She stated her vision to her product, “We aim to be the largest cloth diapers in Indonesia, with the state of the art product design and affordable price”.
Wulan as the owner of Pempem cloth diapers is inspired by her own experience. As a mom, she realised the impact of disposable diapers to her children and the environment. Specifically, her first son had sensitive skin to disposable diapers. She was looking for a solution, rarely provided by local cloth diapers providers, of absorbent cloth diapers that can last for at least 5-6 hours and well-designed for babies age 0–3 years old.
In the early year of its release, the company started by hiring a 3rd party to produce the diapers with the designs and materials provided by her. The material used for the production is a microfiber cloth that is known to be absorbent and soft. It also absorbs dirt, dries 3x faster than cotton, requires less water to clean and lasts longer than cotton.
In 2011, Wulan move to the South Jakarta area as demand started increasing and production cost from the 3rd party was rising as well. To maximize production volume and yet minimize the cost, she hired 9 employees and divided the group into 3 production lines: cutting, sewing, and packaging.
When asked why she focused on this business since the beginning, she said, “Indonesia is a big market, especially Jabodetabek, East and Central Java where we see the demand is high. People are trying to import the goods from neighbouring countries such as Singapore and Australia, although the price is very expensive. We try to serve these main cities as we see the players are still relatively small and there is no major player in the area.”
The product also reflects some of the UN sustainable development goals:
In a glance, we can see that the impact is very broad. Not only for the consumer, network agents and the suppliers, but there are also benefits to the direct neighbourhood. The business has absorbed almost 20 people from the neighbouring area, converted them from unskilled workers and taught them to be skilled and fit to the line of production.
The networking agents are mostly working moms or full time moms who spend their time distributing the cloth diapers through online and offline channels. They make very good profits from the sales made of each diaper.
On the broader view, the product has impacted many aspects of health, economic, and global climate.
Everyone is taking advantage of the cloth diapers business. This is in line with the aim of the business to flourish every entity on the chain of distribution.
As the producer, Tunanstore benefits almost 20% from the total sales (end user price). Resellers take a larger chunk of revenue, around 40% from the end user price.
With total production around 7,200 diapers per month and the average sale price around Rp. 85.000 – 95.000 per diaper (including insert). Tunanstore gross revenue is about 20% from overall sales with total around Rp. 650.000.000 per month. That amount is only from diapers sales, not to mentioned other products such as inserts, wet bags, swimming diapers, etc.
On the other side, moms as the consumer of the product save almost 90% of the cost of using disposable diapers. With the assumption that babies age 0-24 months are using diapers, the average cost that needs to be spent by using disposable diapers is around Rp. 30.000.000 per child.
Using cloth diapers, moms need only spend around Rp. 2.500.000 (ie. 30 diapers in stock) for life time. Not to mention the diapers can be reused to next child in the family.
For the last 5 years, Tunanstore had produced almost 500.000 cloth diapers and sold them through its agent networks. That equals 16.500 children who consumes almost 6.000 – 10.000 diapers per child, before potty training around 24 months old. Every child creates around 1,200 kg of garbage over the course of two years. So, in other words, Tunanstore has helped the government to reduce the garbage for almost 21million kg of garbage in these 5 years of its operation, and we all must remember that it takes hundreds of years for disposable diapers to decompose when exposed to sunlight and air.
According to study in year 1999[i], study tested emissions from three brands of diapers on mice and concluded, “some types of disposable diapers emit mixtures of chemicals that are toxic to the respiratory tract. Disposable diapers should be considered as one of the factors that might cause or exacerbate asthmatic conditions.”
There are other disadvantages caused by disposable diapers:
Those are the factor can be calculated to measure how much Tunanstore have saved for the environment in directly.
[i] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10501153
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Sri Kricahyani Wulandari, Business Owner
