Buleleng Northern Lights

Ignorance of Beratan’s Handicraft Marketing

Puzzlle Beratan is a ‘kelurahan’ autonomous district belonging to Sukasada Sub-Regency of Buleleng Regency, famous for its traditional products made of silver. The district, known since Pre-WW II as a handicraft center of Buleleng Regency, is a popular site because of its geographical position near Singaraja where people make a living as civil servants, working in sea transportation and large plantations.

Buleleng was formerly a seaport belonging to a line sailing from Batavia (Jakarta) through Semarang, Surabaya, Buleleng itself, and Makassar, with an alternative route taking in Kupang (Timor). There have also been large plantations producing coffee in the West, and oranges (known as ‘Jeruk of Bali’ or ‘sumaga’) in the East, while Bali’s longest beach of Buleleng was full of coconut trees producing copra. All these products went to Surabaya for trade.
Such was the background of the agricultural industry of pre-war Buleleng creating a significant secondary market for Beratan’s silver handicrafts made in traditional workshops inherited by local people from about four families from generation to generation. Today the products are on sale throughout Bali, including its tourist resorts in the South, yet the owners of Beratan’s workshops of silver wares have known little about the distribution and sale of their work.
One of the Beratan’s craftsmen, Mr. Putu Sarya, for instance, even could not tell Bali Travel News how he has marketed so that they reach art shops in Ubud, Kuta, or Sukawati in South Bali. He spoke of his ignorance of marketing outside his place of origin. He has left the marketing of his products to traders, who take the ornaments and some ritual implements he has made together with his son and sell them along the highway linking Singaraja (through Beratan) and Denpasar.
Nevertheless, Sarya supposes that the mobile traders who regularly visit his workshop, sell his products to art shops everywhere in Bali for sale to purchasers, including foreign tourists, at higher prices. He noted that the hawkers come from Sudaji (Keloncing Sub-Regency of East Buleleng) and Banyuatis (Busungbiu Sub-Regency of West Buleleng). Both of these villages have been home to educated and wealthy citizens, including big landowners, since the Dutch Colonial Era. (leo)