For years, the natural stone used in villas, resorts, and swimming pools in Bali has been associated with the island itself. But some of that stone comes from somewhere else entirely, Sukabumi.

In 2021, the founder of CV Alam Berkah Indonesia, Helmi saw an opportunity in a resource close to home. Sukabumi Stone, a distinctive natural stone known for its appearance and zeolite content. The challenge was not finding the product. It was finding the world beyond Sukabumi that wanted to buy it.

Today, CV Alam Berkah Indonesia supplies natural stone and handcrafted products to international buyers, with the company reporting a consistent export volume of around seven to eight containers per month in recent months.

Its journey offers a useful lesson for Indonesian businesses considering the leap from local commerce to global B2B trade, having a differentiated product is only the beginning. The harder question is how to put that product in front of the right buyers, build credibility, and turn international interest into commercial relationships.

For CV Alam Berkah Indonesia, Alibaba.com became part of that process.

Seeing Global Potential in a Local Resource

The business began with a simple observation. Sukabumi has a distinctive natural stone that the founder had seen being used in swimming pools, villas, and resorts in Bali. International visitors were already encountering the material, but the origin story was less visible. The stone was not from Bali, but from Sukabumi.

That gap between where a product is consumed and where it originates became the starting point for CV Alam Berkah Indonesia's export ambitions. The company began by introducing Sukabumi Stone to potential overseas buyers, initially using a relatively straightforward approach: email marketing and direct pitching. The first international buyer came from Argentina, a swimming pool contractor.

Then came inquiries from other countries. The response changed the company's direction. “When we first started the business, we were actually surprised to see that the response was much stronger from international markets.” Instead of treating international sales as an extension of the domestic business, the company began exploring how to make global markets a core part of its growth strategy.

The Problem Wasn't the Product. It Was Market Access.

For many Indonesian businesses, going global does not necessarily begin with building a factory or developing another product. It begins with finding demand. B2B export is fundamentally different from selling through a conventional consumer marketplace. An international buyer may be sourcing for a resort project, a construction company, a distributor, or a specialized contractor. The buying process can involve specifications, quantities, samples, negotiation, logistics, and multiple conversations before an order is finalized.

That makes access to relevant buyers especially important. CV Alam Berkah Indonesia needed a way to see where demand existed, and to put its products in front of businesses that were actively sourcing. That was when the company discovered Alibaba.com.

From Waiting for Buyers to Looking for Demand

The feature that first caught the founder's attention was RFQ, or Request for Quotation. Rather than relying exclusively on buyers discovering a storefront, RFQ allows sellers to respond proactively to sourcing requests posted by buyers. Alibaba.com describes RFQ as a way for sellers to find and connect with buyers who are requesting products similar to what they offer. For CV Alam Berkah Indonesia, this changed the way the team thought about international demand. Instead of asking only:

“How do we find buyers for our stone?” the question became: “Who is looking for products like ours right now?”

That distinction matters. For a specialized product such as natural stone, the addressable market may not be obvious from the domestic market alone. RFQ provided another way to observe sourcing demand across international markets and identify potential opportunities.

The company says it has since connected with dozens of potential buyers through Alibaba.com and closed business with buyers in markets including Mexico and Sri Lanka. It is now also handling a resort-related request from a buyer in Jamaica.

Building Trust Before the First Conversation

Finding a buyer is only one side of international B2B commerce. The other is trust. An overseas buyer may never have visited the supplier's facility. They may be thousands of kilometers away, operating in a different language and business environment.

That makes the supplier's digital presence part of the sales process. For CV Alam Berkah Indonesia, its Alibaba.com Minisite became one of those trust-building touchpoints. The founder says having a professional storefront that international buyers can review has helped the company appear more credible when engaging with potential customers. This reflects a broader reality of modern B2B trade: the first factory visit increasingly happens online.

A buyer can encounter a supplier through search, examine its products, review its company information, look at images, and start a conversation before the two companies ever meet. Alibaba.com provides seller storefront and Minisite capabilities as part of its broader B2B selling ecosystem. Its seller tools also include product showcases, analytics, RFQ, advertising, and communication tools designed to help suppliers reach and engage international buyers. For a business trying to establish itself beyond its domestic market, that digital storefront can become more than a catalog. It becomes the first impression.

Export Growth Is Not Just About Finding More Countries

Today, CV Alam Berkah Indonesia offers more than Sukabumi Stone. Its portfolio includes black lava stone, limestone, and handcrafted products, giving international buyers a broader range of natural stone solutions. Its international customer base has also expanded across different markets. The company reports that demand has come particularly from markets in Asia and Latin America, including the Philippines, Thailand, Mexico, and Brazil. But the founder's story suggests that geographic expansion was not the result of simply choosing countries from a list.

Different markets came with different requirements. “Each country has its own specific needs and demands.” That is one of the defining characteristics of B2B global trade. International expansion is not simply about translating a product catalog into another language. It requires understanding what buyers in different markets are actually looking for, and whether the business can fulfill those requirements.

When AI Becomes Part of the Export Workflow

As the business grew, the company's use of Alibaba.com also evolved beyond buyer discovery. The founder highlights several tools that have become part of the company's day-to-day workflow, including KWA, Smart Assistant, AI-powered content tools, and messaging. KWA, or Keyword Advertising, can help sellers increase product exposure to buyers searching for relevant products. Alibaba.com also provides Smart Assistant tools designed to support product optimization, inquiries, RFQ responses, translation, and other seller operations.

For a lean business, these tools address a practical problem, international selling creates more work at exactly the moment a company needs to scale.

• Product descriptions need to be prepared. Images need to be created.
• Buyer inquiries need to be answered.
• RFQs need to be evaluated.
• Conversations may happen across time zones.
• And the storefront needs to stay updated.

Alibaba.com's newer Smart Assistant Agent extends this approach further by using AI to support product publishing, inquiry communication, opportunity development, and store diagnosis. For CV Alam Berkah Indonesia, AI has already become useful for creating product descriptions and generating additional product imagery. The technology is not replacing the business relationship. It is reducing some of the operational friction around it.

From a Local Resource to 7–8 Containers a Month

Perhaps the clearest measure of the company's evolution is not the number of countries it has reached, but the physical scale of the business. According to the founder, CV Alam Berkah Indonesia now has a capacity of around eight containers per month and has consistently reached approximately seven to eight containers in recent months.

That is a significant shift from a business that began by introducing a locally sourced product to overseas buyers through email. The company's export journey illustrates an important distinction between having an exportable product and building an export business. The first requires something the world wants.

The second requires a repeatable system for finding demand, presenting the business, communicating with buyers, managing opportunities, and fulfilling orders.

For CV Alam Berkah Indonesia, Alibaba.com has become part of that system.

What Indonesian Exporters Can Learn From the Journey

The story of CV Alam Berkah Indonesia is ultimately less about stone than it is about market access. The company did not begin with an obvious global brand. It began with a resource from Sukabumi. Its first international buyer came from Argentina. Its market eventually expanded to other parts of the world.

And the business gradually built the operational capacity to serve international demand at scale. There are several lessons in that journey for Indonesian businesses considering B2B export.

1. Your competitive advantage may already exist locally

Global products do not always start with globally famous brands. Sometimes the advantage is a resource, capability, manufacturing process, or product that is already available locally, but has not yet been presented to the right international audience. For CV Alam Berkah Indonesia, Sukabumi Stone was that starting point.

2. International expansion starts with understanding demand

Rather than assuming which countries might want a product, businesses can use tools such as RFQ and market analytics to observe actual sourcing activity and identify potential opportunities. Alibaba.com provides RFQ access and industry analytics as part of its seller ecosystem.

3. Your digital storefront is part of your export infrastructure

For an international buyer, the first interaction with a supplier may happen entirely online. That makes product listings, company information, imagery, and digital credibility important parts of the sales journey, not simply marketing decoration.

4. Technology can help lean teams operate globally

International selling can create operational complexity quickly. AI-powered tools can help sellers streamline tasks such as content creation, product optimization, buyer communication, and opportunity management, allowing small teams to spend more time on the conversations and decisions that require human judgment.

5. Export growth is a process, not a single transaction

CV Alam Berkah Indonesia's journey did not happen through one buyer or one campaign. It evolved from initial outreach, to discovering international demand, to building buyer relationships, to expanding markets and increasing shipment volume. That is the nature of B2B global trade. The first order proves that a market exists. A repeatable export process is what turns that opportunity into a business.

From Beyond Local to Global

For Indonesian businesses, the world is full of buyers searching for products they may never have encountered before. The challenge is making sure those buyers can find you. CV Alam Berkah Indonesia started with a stone from Sukabumi.

Today, that stone is part of an international business reaching buyers across multiple markets. Its story is a reminder that going global does not always begin by looking outward. Sometimes, it begins by looking at what you already have, and finding a better way to bring it to the world.

​

Ready to explore your own international market?

Explore Alibaba.com's B2B export solutions and discover how Indonesian businesses can build their global presence, connect with international buyers, and manage their export journey from one platform.