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The Indonesian Furniture Industry.
There are 3 main types of furniture industry here.
Hand made, Semi Machine/Hand made and Fully machine made. The main center for furniture manufacturing is in Jepara, Java. Other furniture manufacturing areas include Solo, Semarang, Surabaya and etc.
1. Hand made/Jepara
Hand made by village carpenters (most likely in their back yards) that are hired by small factories and then consolidated to make up an entire order. Quality control issues are a
problem as one guy in one village is making a set of 100 chairs and then another guy in another place is making another 100 chairs for the same order.
Uniform construction is rarely possible as they don't have the cutting machines or identical templates to make each piece the same as what the other guy is making. For example, they cut the holes of the wood slats of the back of the chairs fit in with a chisel and in some cases a screwdriver. Many times they don't even cut slat holes at all and just glue the slats in place with ordinary wood glue. Holes are drilled with one of those old school hand drills and that isn't the way to make a clean hole. Sit in a chair like that a few times and the back blows out. Where hardware is placed the wood is chiseled out instead of being cut out with a table saw or router. Most of Jepara's factories use plain wood glue for the joints and they don't dowel or mortise the joints at all. They just butt them together with plain wood glue. Some carpenters aren't as good as others and some are just plain bad. Controlling the quality in this type of environment is next to impossible.
Kiln dried wood.
This is the most critical aspect of quality furniture. Every factory in Jepara will say they use kiln dried wood, but the fact is that the majority of them use only air dried wood. If you go to Jepara you will be hard pressed to find any drying kilns. The result is that you never get a consistent quality product but what you will get are a lot of headaches, lots of customer complaints resulting from poor quality and 99% of the time absolutely no recourse.
2. Semi Machine/Machine made
This is what we do. What that means is that some pieces are cut fully by machine and some are cut by hand using a cutting machine and a metal plate template.
(A) Fully machined. A jointer/planer accepts a piece of milled wood and spits out a clean chair back slat piece 3/4" X 24". The next piece is exactly the same and so on.
(B) Semi
Machine. A metal template (E.G. steamer chair arm) is made and set up on a roller/cutter and manually manipulated through the blade and the result is that each arm is identical.
Then, the pieces are pre sanded by a sanding machine and assembled by hand and then finish sanded by hand. It's as close as you can get to fully machine made, but at a lower cost.
3. Fully machine made.
Machine made furniture. Every piece is machine made. Every piece is really good with no defects except for what shows in the grain of the wood if it isn't absolutely a
clear piece of heartwood teak. Sample cost for one basic folding chair from a full machine made factory, $175.00 (wholesale) Minimum order, ten 40' containers. (if they will even accept your order)
Our products:
Machine/Hand cutting/milling.
Machine/Semi Machine made.
Quality A teak wood.
Kiln drying to 10-12% moisture content at stabilization point.
Epoxy adhesives in every joining area and every joint.
Doweling in every joint.
Good quality hardware.
100% quality guaranteed.
What the others do:
Hand cutting. (inconsistent)
Poor quality construction.
Quality of wood questionable.
Air drying or not dried at all.
Plain wood gluing.
No doweling.
Cheap hardware.
Sold as is.
No guarantee.
No recourse for rejects.
The choice is simple. If you want good quality, you have to pay for it.
Cutting prices means cutting the quality somewhere. You aren't just paying for the furniture, you are paying for reliability, quality control and having recourse if something goes wrong. What really counts is the quality of construction and materials used and most importantly, we will also guarantee 100% any product against defects or workmanship resulting from our manufacturing. If there is any major problem (cracking, splitting, joints come apart, legs fall off, slats blow out) we will replace the defective product. Ask your other potential suppliers if they offer this guarantee and if they are going to replace defective products.
We remain one of Indonesia's top manufacturers for the simple reason that we care about our quality and our customer's needs. We trust you will find your decision to work with us a good one.
Bali Exports Co.
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