In a warehouse on the Paris-Van-Java land, Ajis watches 150,000 corsets move through his production floor every month. Most are bound not for local malls, but for buyers in Malaysia, India, Canada, Pakistan, and Italy. Five years ago, this scale of international reach would have required a small army of sales representatives knocking on doors across Indonesia. Today, Ajis and his team at PT Jawara Tiga Sekawan, better known as JTS Garment, do much of it from a laptop.

Their platform of choice is Alibaba.com, the global B2B marketplace that has quietly become the launchpad for thousands of Indonesian manufacturers trying to sell to the world. For Ajis, the decision to join was not a marketing experiment. It was a strategic bet on how small and medium-sized manufacturers can compete in global trade without building a global sales force first.

Pivoting From Plain T-Shirts to a Global Niche

JTS Garment did not start as a corset company. For years, it operated as a general garment manufacturer, producing basic apparel and plain fashion items for the domestic market. In 2023, Ajis and his team began a hard look at where the real opportunity lay.

"We analyzed the market and asked ourselves which segment is large, underserved, and worth mastering" Ajis recalled. The data pointed to shapewear and corsets, a category with strong demand across e-commerce platforms but limited local manufacturing depth.

The pivot was not easy. Indonesia lacked a reliable supply chain for corset-specific fabrics, elastics, and structural components. For the first three months, the company’s research and development team struggled to source materials that met their quality standards. But once they solved the supply chain puzzle, JTS Garment became what Ajis claims is Indonesia’s only end-to-end manufacturer of corsets and shapewear.

The product line now splits into two segments. The first is fashion corsets, designed for style and everyday wear. The second and currently the larger focus is maternity and postpartum shapewear, a category that demands stricter material safety, comfort engineering, and sizing precision.

The Old Playbook of Scraping, Visiting, Hoping

Before Alibaba.com, JTS Garment’s customer acquisition looked like old-school field sales. Ajis' team would scrape local e-commerce platforms to identify Indonesian brands selling corsets, analyze their product lines, reverse-engineer samples through internal R&D, and then visit those brands one by one to pitch custom manufacturing.

It worked, but inefficiently. The process was slow, labor-intensive, and geographically bounded. More importantly, it kept the company anchored to the Indonesian market at exactly the moment it wanted to think bigger.

"We had a clear mission to become a global-class manufacturer," Ajis said. "But the traditional way of finding customers does not scale across borders."

The Marketplace Shortcut

In 2025, JTS Garment joined Alibaba.com. Ajis was drawn to two features in particular RFQ (Request for Quotation) and Trade Assurance.

RFQ flips the traditional sales model. Instead of manufacturers hunting for buyers, buyers post what they need, and suppliers bid for the business. For a specialized manufacturer like JTS Garment, this means every incoming request is already filtered by product category, volume, and intent.

"RFQ is like a live pipeline of qualified leads," Ajis explained. "We can see buyers who are actively looking for exactly what we produce, and we can respond with a quotation immediately."

Trade Assurance, Alibaba.com’s escrow-like payment protection program, solved the trust problem that often kills first-time cross-border deals. For a relatively unknown Indonesian supplier competing against factories from China, Vietnam, and Bangladesh, the ability to offer buyers a secured transaction lowered a major barrier to entry.

The Geography Shift

The impact was immediate and geographical. Within months, JTS Garment was no longer limited to door-to-door sales in Indonesia. It was receiving inquiries from Malaysia, India, Canada, Pakistan, and Italy, markets that would have taken years to penetrate through traditional trade shows or sales trips.

Today, the company runs a production capacity of roughly 150,000 pieces per month, equivalent to about three full containers. The operational rhythm has changed too. Where Ajis' team once spent days scheduling visits and compiling prospect lists, they now spend their time monitoring RFQs, refining quotations, and managing production quality.

"We still care deeply about relationships," Ajis said. "But Alibaba.com is the bridge that introduces us to the right customer at the right time."

Why This Matters for Indonesia’s Manufacturing SMEs

JTS Garment’s story is not just a single-company case study. It reflects a broader shift in how Indonesian manufacturers can enter global supply chains.

Indonesia has long been a player in textiles and garments, but many of its factories remain invisible to international buyers. They lack the brand recognition of Chinese suppliers, the trade-show budgets of Turkish exporters, or the dedicated export departments of large conglomerates. Digital B2B marketplaces lower those barriers by giving smaller manufacturers a storefront on the same platform used by global buyers.

For Ajis, the logic is simple. "Alibaba.com is a shortcut," he said. "It compresses the marketing funnel. Instead of scraping data and visiting clients one by one, you sit, monitor demand, and respond."

A Manufacturer’s Advice to Other Sellers

Ajis is direct when asked what he would tell other Indonesian SMEs considering Alibaba.com. His answer is aimed squarely at the consideration stage, the moment when a business owner knows global expansion is possible but is not yet sure which platform to trust.

"If you have a vision to go international, Alibaba.com is the right platform," he said. "It gives you the meeting point between supplier and customer. You do not need to build everything yourself."

He adds one caveat: the platform is not a replacement for product quality or operational discipline. JTS Garment’s success on Alibaba.com is built on the same foundations that made its domestic business work. Consistent quality, reliable commitments, and the integrity to protect the brands it manufactures for.

JTS Garment’s transformation from a local garment jobber to a specialized exporter illustrates a larger truth about modern global trade. The manufacturers that win are not necessarily the biggest or the oldest. They are the ones that combine deep product expertise with the right digital infrastructure.

For Indonesian SMEs watching from the sidelines, the message is clear, the tools to reach global buyers already exist. The question is whether you are ready to use them.

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