The textile company, PT Eratex Djaya Tbk (Eratex), projects that this year's sales will grow 10 percent compared to last year. Director of PT Eratex Djaya Tbk, Mandeep Singh, explained that in 2020 the export market for the company's products in a number of countries such as the US, Europe, Japan and others reduced demand. Because these countries are concentrating on dealing with the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The policies they have taken have hit the company's export performance and have an impact on sales decline. One of them is a lockdown policy such as in the US and Japan, which makes access to imported products from other countries closed. Modern markets or malls that are the target of the company's product sales will also not operate during the lockdown.
"As a result of this policy, all customers were forced to reduce their demand, so that the company's sales during 2020 also decreased by 12%," said Mandeep.
Mandeep said, so far, the contribution of the US and Japan was quite large in the company's sales. In 2020, the US market contributed 60.44% and Japan 32.04%. Then, followed by European countries with 2.77% and several other countries such as Hong Kong, Korea, Taiwan, China and Mexico with 4.02%.
During the first two months of 2021, demand for the company's products in all export destination countries has begun to slightly improve. He is optimistic that this condition will last until the end of the year and the export market will be better than the previous year.
"Therefore, we also project that our sales can grow 10% this year," said Mandeep.
He said, the increasing demand for the export market this year was also due to the market having experienced a decline in demand in 2020. And, as long as the market experiences this sluggishness, while reducing production costs, the company also continues to anticipate the possibility of a market recovery by developing new products to diversify its portfolio.
"We hope that the products we develop in 2020 will help increase the number of our customers in 2021 and 2022," explained Mandeep.
However, he emphasized that the global impact of the Covid-19 pandemic was not only on the sluggish market, but also on changes in consumer behavior. For example, consumers who usually wear short pants or shirts, now prefer to wear long ones.
"We have anticipated this change with our new products that adapt to conditions after this pandemic," he said.
While market changes due to the impact of the pandemic may also increase online sales. Because consumers will feel safer buying products online.
"The possibility of increasing online sales this year is also anticipated by adding a special online sales partner. We are also exploring other countries for new export markets, "added Mandeep.
