On February 2016, I spent some days to travel to Europe after finish the AMBIENTE Exhibition in Frankfurt, Germany. One of my goal is to find out our basket – Seloagro basket that has been used by anyone on the street. It was challenging when I put the goal to myself because you know SeloAgro is small company if you compare to other rattan basket company in Indonesia. We delivered hundred thousands of baskets per year but still not enough to compete with the giant. And, to make more challenging I want to focus to find out only our bike basket on the street.
I make two plans, first : just go to everywhere and if I am lucky I will get the bike basket pictures. The second is go straight to parking line, or bicycle parking area, the store or shopping center. The second part are easy compare to the first one.
The first preparation after planing is : I have to know what the product name in that country. So I am using google translate to translate bike basket into some language. I got this :
- Holland / dutch : Fietsmand
- Germany : Fahrradkorb
- French : Vélo Panier
I also practice how to spell it in better way. The French bike basket was the worst to spell 🙂 But I got it at the last.
The first time I saw It was in Frankfurt Central Station. I did not have the picture because it was too cold. I have to take out my glove but I decided not because It make me freezing. The temperature was not too cold actually, only 12C but the wind make it like below zero. The next day I found some of our basket in shopping center area still in Frankfurt.
I then went to Holland. After quite from The Hague central station, I found many of SeloAgro bike baskets. I was in tears..tears of thankful and also proud. Proud of our products and of course my team, the weaver who do hand woven, the team who do the finishing. Look.. It was amazing to realize that you are from a far far away country, your products are in here. They appreciate what you did, hard work and it pays. When I came back to Indonesia, I told the same story to all of my worker. I know they are really in proud and of course they deserve it.
Some of baskets I saw was broken, but still they use it. I also see the accessories of bike basket that we use for handle are quite good. FYI, we are using pu leather ( polyurethane ). It is not good to use pu in tropical area like Indonesia. The humidity are too high. But in Europe the accessories looked fine because the humidity are low.
Please visit this link to see some of our rattan bike basket products or my post about bike baskets.
These are some of pictures I took while travel to Europe. Sorry for bad taken 🙂 I don’t want the owner of the bike get tension with me hahhaa…
