Archive for September 13th, 2006
to his line of specialist products,he produced low-priced cigarettes,
such as Djangan Lawan, made fromless expensive tobacco and containing
more artificial flavours and fragrances.
He often observed that farmers had plenty of money for cigarettes after the
harvest, but as their savings dwindled during the year, they had to buy less
expensive products and he too wanted to supply that market.
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Despite creating lower priced cigarettes for the masses, Seeng Tee’s true business
focus was the manufacture and sale of higher priced cigarettes made from the finest
tobacco and natural spices. The core of the family’s production would continue to be
the white cigarettes that were rolled in white or cream coloured paper while the clove
cigarettes were rolled in myriad of colours, including black, red, green, and orange.
The use of coloured cigarette paper was the fashion of the day, adopted by all the
central Java kretek factories. However, the practice of using coloured paper may have
been more driven by the lack of proper imported cigarette paper than by the desire of
the kretek manufacturers to differentiate their products from the white tobacco brands.
 Seeng Tee’s responsibilities gradually shifted from selling
with his wife in the stall to sourcing the raw materials for
the cigarettes, including the packaging, tobacco and spices,
particularly cloves. Initially, the tobacco was sourced from
Madura with the cloves coming from Zanzibar, sourced through
the local spice traders. While the Indonesian Manado cloves were
less expensive, Seeng Tee felt that they did not provide the same
smooth taste as the more expensive Zanzibar cloves. His blend
formula for Dji Sam Soe allowed only Zanzibar cloves in the original Dji Sam Soe blend. However, as the quality of Indonesian
cloves harvesting improved, the use of Indonesian cloves was
allowed to be used in the family’s blend specifications.
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The white machine-made cigarette brands Seeng Tee and Tjiang Nio made included the
brands Sampoerna Star, Summer Palace, and Statue of Liberty. Sampoerna Star was a filtered
product, one of the first filtered cigarettes in Indonesia. The clove or kretek product names
were simply the blend numbers of the product,such as “123”, “720”, and “678”.
source : www.houseofsampoerna.com
September 13th, 2006
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up to the highest section of the bamboo poles. With a small knife she pried
open a section in the side of the bamboo and exposed a cache of thriftily hoarded
Ringgit more than sufficient to buy the tobacco. Tjiang Nio had been saving from
her cake sales and the proceeds of the shop. With the financing in place for the
purchase of the large store of tobacco, the family’s mercantile direction was now
firmly set. From now on, Seeng Tee and Tjiang Nio would dedicate all their joint
resources and energy to developing their tobacco business.
In addition to tobacco products, they could also request that spices such as chocolate,
vanilla, nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves be added to the tobacco blend. This blend was
then hand-rolled at the stall into a cigarette on a small manual machine. Seeng Tee
and his wife soon realised that the time-consuming practice of cigarette rolling was detracting from their ability to sell higher-margin processed food products and
cigarettes. Once, they discussed about closing the tobacco portion of the business
and dedicating more shop space to the other products. Tjiang Nio, however, felt
that customers might prefer to buy pre-rolled products in the most popular blend
combinations. This hunch proved correct and the business expanded quickly with the
availability of pre-rolled conventional white and clove or “kretek” cigarettes at the
family stall.
The new products provided good returns for the meagre working capital available at
the time. However, it was necessary for both Seeng Tee and Tjiang Nio to work late
into the night rolling the cigarettes by kerosene lantern in their small house under the
bridge. The blending and rolling process eventually occupied completely the first floor of
the bamboo-walled house. In fact, the tobacco and rolling equipment had to be pushed
to the sides of the room at night to provide space for the family’s sleeping mats.
source : www.houseofsampoerna.com
September 13th, 2006
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Time working in Surabaya, Seeng Tee had also begun to court a 16-year-old
Hokkien girl named Siem Tjiang Nio who lived with her parents near the centre
of the city. Her parents advised her not to marry a man four years her senior
with neither schooling nor stable family background. The couple was able to
marry quietly in the spring of 1912.
Seeng Tee and Tjiang Nio began their marriage living in squatter quarters on Jalan
Gang Gembong, a residence built under the protection of a bridge. The house, as
was the custom of the time, was constructed some two metres off the ground. The
two-story structure consisted of bamboo poles with walls of woven bamboo panels
with the family living on the floor above the ground with their livestock enclosed
below at ground level.
Soon after his marriage, Seeng Tee found a more regular job in the city of Lamongan,
45km west of Surabaya, blending and rolling cigarettes for a small cigarette manu-
facturer. It was here that he had his first introduction to the cigarette business in
East Java, it was at this job that the owner of the factory recognised and commented
on Seeng Tee’s apparent natural ability to blend Indonesian tobacco and it was here
also that Seeng Tee’s first entrepreneurial dreams began to materialise…
Within six months of their marriage, Seeng Tee and his wife had saved enough to
rent a small stall in the old city of Surabaya on Jalan Cantian Pojok from which they
sold basic food stuffs and tobacco products. In addition to the shop sales, Seeng Tee
peddled tobacco products from the back of his bicycle through the streets of Surabaya
to both retailers and wholesalers. As a result the construction of a new bridge, Jalan Cantian Pojok became a crowded detour for traffic most of the day and night with the
business prospering as the volume of customers grew.
Never idle herself, Tjiang Nio continued to contribute to the family finances by making
cakes and selling them in front of their home each evening. It was in this house that
the family began to grow as the first children, two sons, Swie Hwa and Swie Ling, were
born in 1914 and 1915 respectively.
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source : www.houseofsampoerna.com
September 13th, 2006