The Indonesian Textile Association (API) stated that the sale and purchase of illegally imported used clothes or thrifting has a domino effect. This is because it is not only the textile industry that is affected, but also the Small and Medium Industries (IKM), garment factories, and banking. "The (effect) financially is not very big, but we can see a domino effect," said API Executive Director Danang Girindrawardana, Wednesday (29/3/2023). He continued, IKM or UKM could die because they could not compete with various waste products that entered the country. He emphasized that the value of these waste items is close to zero, making it difficult to compete.

If SMEs cannot compete, he continued, they can no longer buy textiles from the textile industry.

"The textile industry is definitely a big industry, if these big ones can't sell to SMEs, they will lose the market. That will die too," explained Danang.

If the textile industry dies, he continued, the large garment industry will also die. Then it can cause banks to collapse or go bankrupt, because banks are channeling credit to various levels in the textile and garment industry.

"This is a cycle. It's a dangerous link if the thrifting situation is allowed to become a culture of cheap fashion, people don't care anymore about the risk of national impact," he said.

Danang continued, actually the API's concern about thrifting behavior has been felt since many years ago. Even six months ago, associations issued numerous notifications to the government, both the Ministry of Commerce, the Ministry of Industry, and law enforcement.

That's because according to him, the activity clearly violated the import process. It's just that, he explained, there is no problem with the trading process from SMEs to buyers.

"What we see is a big problem, right import. We are worried that if the imports are getting bigger and bigger, this will be a big problem," he said.