Loading...Images courtesy of Brightspot Market
After its 2 years Anniversary last April, Brightspot Market is back again for its 7th event at Plaza Senayan starting Thursday, 24th November until 27 November 2011. Noted to be the biggest of Brightspot since its inception, the market that caters “all things cool” under its roof will be presented in a 3000m square space and will carry over 100 brands. Although, we have anticipated the four-day event, each year, Whiteboard Journal made its way to talk with the people behind Brightspot Market to talk about the role of each members, how much has grown since it first started and what holds for the future of Brightspot Market.— 
Leonard Theosabrata (Leonard Theosabrata Design) W: Can you tell us your role in Brightspot Market? Aside from being one of the co-founders, specifically I’m in charge of the interior, the concept, and also, basically the building process of the event itself, the production of the event. That’s my main focus. W: Brightspot Market has always taken place in a mall, where the set-up is already available, how do you put things together? One of the initial ideas was to utilize the underutilized spaces in the mall. Back then – two years ago – there was a lot of empty lots in the mall, all over it. I mean we’re not just talking about newly opened mall, but it’s also the existing mall, the established mall, they have like [a lot of spaces], just oversupplied, and we kind of captured that opportunity, I felt like, “Okay, they offered us space and they wanted us to throw an event,” ‘event’ back then means ‘bazaar’, you know, all this kind of thingw, so we didn’t want to make just another ‘bazaar’, so that’s why we came up with the market concept. Basically, the idea is to utilize the empty lots and then make it into a temporary retail event market that can generate retail activity and also, be considered a cultural activity, but it’s not just about shopping, actually, it’s more than that. W: How do you take the reference of the design then? Mainly, it was just function-based, we looked at it, like, “Okay, empty lots, there’s nothing. The floor’s messed up, the wall’s messed up, no AC, or maybe yes, there’s AC, but we have to do something,” I mean whatever necessary to bring the space to the requirement that we need, we will do, and the rest is just like assigning the lots and build up the… I mean the look has to fit the market, which is by now you can call it the Brightspot Market, the Brightspot generation, or whatever. And at the time we look the references [from], for example, Bread & Butter, and some other events in America, they do these temporary events that are very much industrial, not much decoration, but you have to pay attention a lot on the layout, the flow, and the organizing part of it, and also the essence, so we pay attention to the essence and none of the embellishment, so it’s just purely function, function that meets the requirement of the market. A lot of people, they do events and they’re like, “Oh, we gotta do the ‘wow’ factor, this and that,”. We don’t do that kind of thing, none of that – I mean yes, we do it in our way, which is we pay more attention to the basic things. For example, even to the business concept of it, we set to accommodate, for example, affordable prices from the beginning so that these new entrepreneurs and businesses can afford it, instead of like having all this establish concept going into our new concept, it doesn’t work, so we want new concept in our new concept, and for that you have to sacrifice, you have to sell at a very affordable price; in the beginning it was like two million [rupiahs] or something, now it’s like eight, because it’s growing. But we invest in our brand equity, we invest in our tenants, I mean we give them the opportunity in the beginning, we didn’t make money. |
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W: When you talk about good design, how do you ensure you give the liberty of the tenants to design their own booths while making sure that everything goes within your design requirements, how do you put balance between that?Basically, we set the parameters, a set of rules, we also don’t want output. A lot of the rules are set so that the process can go smoothly, I mean you don’t want somebody come in and like, “I wanna build 3 story high and with this embellish,” . We try to enforce where we think as an organizer, or as a curator, there will be a common denominator, so no one stands out too much than the others, things like that, we pay attention to that – competition is good, but we, as the organizer, have to be fair to everybody. That’s our point of view, we always have to do it that way.
W: At Brightspot Market, the tenants do creative things with design, they give full retail experience, but it’s only applicable and successful at Brightspot, so do you think they can do that independently? I think a lot of the brands is using Brightspot as a launching fest, either they want to release their new collection or it’s their first time to release anything, I think they like Brightspot as a launching fest. It also gives them a different, like a unique retail experience because they’re dealing with a certain market that came, but there’s also other kind of people – that’s why we do it in a mall, so it will not generate only segmented market, because Indonesia, as we know, has a really huge market, so in terms of applying it from Brightspot to conventional retail, I think there’s a lot of changes needs to be done, they cannot literally go like, “I’m successful in Brightspot, I think I have the confidence to open my shop now,” well, Brightspot is a 4-day shopping frenzy, it’s full of energy, I mean in real retail, just like when we opened The Goods Dept for example, we really think about that, like, “Okay, how do we change the excitement from Brightspot and transfer that into a permanent retail that opens everyday?” How do you translate that? I mean that’s very important, the way you do it is gonna determine the success of your concept. If you just think, “I can sell this much at Brightspot,” well, yeah, it’s forty-something thousand people in four days, I mean how much is the average traffic in a mall? You have to be careful about that, don’t be complacent and then you’re like, “I’m ready to open a shop.” You have to really access every market, every location is different, every set-up is different, so retail is very complicated, but it’s a good barometer for them to see whether or not people are interested in their products. W: Brighspot Market has always been held in malls, do you think about bringing Brightspot into a different location, like outdoor spaces? We’d love to, but depends on the cost of building up. It’s gonna be more expensive. And I think it’s bullshit when Indonesian people say it’s okay to be in outdoor – no, they like AC, man, they like to be inside, in the car or in the mall, like, no way, man, we love our AC (laughs). I don’t think it’s going to be successful if it’s outdoor. Just that, plain and simple. We, as Brightspot, are not confident enough to go outside mall – for obvious reasons: parking, convenience of others, facilities that will support the event. I mean the tendency of Brightspot visitors is that they go into ours, they go out and eat, and maybe the even like wait for hang out in some other cafe, and then they come back again with their friends, and they go out again, they do something, and then come back again. So, if it’s just Brightspot, that whole circle won’t happen, the circle will be different, so I think it’s good to be in a mall, and we’re always gonna try to be in a mall, if they permit us. The problem is we’re growing all the time, the next one is gonna be 3000 m2, huge.
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