Bali Belly

I’ve not yet been able to watch a bandwagon roll past me without at least trying to jump on it and, so, here I go again — late again: Skype.

Now, if you’re in the US or the UK, you can call me cheaply at the US or UK telephone number or, even more cheaply, skype direct to my laptop (it’s almost always switched on and in front of me).

Here’s everything you need to know about dropping me a line:

Indonesia Export
Office & Warehouse
Jl. Bypass Ngurah Rai 654
Bali, Indonesia 80223

Email: info@beads-bali.com

Skype: sean_hynes

Indonesia (+62) Tel.  (361)  721-575  –  Fax. (361) 720-889

USA (+1) Tel.  (201) 467-5570

UK (+44) Tel.  (0131) 208-1282

 In case you missed the announcement, Beads-Bali.com is now live — here’s one of the introductory FAQ articles, let me know what you think.

[taken from http://www.beads-bali.com/wordpress/who-are-you-re...]

Who are you really?

We’re Beads Bali (well, you already know that).

The company, at this time, is made up of myself (Sean), my wife Athina and a group of local silver smiths and bead makers. There is also my wife’s puppy, Jolie, and my black lab, Mojo. 

We live here in Bali, fairly close to the beach (I can see it from my window as I type this).

I’m fairly new to the beading business but I’ve been working professionally in Bali for the last ten years (or more) exporting handicrafts and furniture around the world with Indonesia Export.

My background is London-Irish (ethnic, not the rugby team although I did manage a short stint there while I was a kid).

Athina is originally from Solo on the island of Java – that’s very close to the recent earthquake and volcano if you caught any of that on the news.

The idea for making a specialist department to handle bead supplies and exports out of Bali was Athina’s – she believes that although the market is very competitive, there are actually only a few decent, ethical suppliers out there doing business and even less of those are based here on Bali with the resources that we have.

 Athina is the one to talk to about new designs, sourcing beads and all of the creative, hard work. She is also the only member on the team with any concept of taste or fashion. Really.

I deal mostly with communication, logistics and being mean to people when they show up at our warehouse with lousy products. I do this very well.

You could say that Athina walks softly while I carry the big stick.

If you want to know any personal information about us, you can check out are blogs:

http://www.katakoe.com — Athina’s website — partly in English.

http://www.bali-belly.com — my website.

Or, you could email us at info@beads-bali.com

Up until about five minutes ago, I thought I understood the meaning of “Bali Bead”…

… I was wrong (sigh).

I had thought, silly me… SOOOO naive… that a Bali bead was a bead made in Bali. Apparently not.

According to one article:

“Bali beads originated in India. The Indians taught the Balinese how to make the beads. The majority of Bali beads today are still made in India. Some people differentiate between Bali and Bali Style beads. Bali style beads are made the same way as Bali beads, but do not come from Bali – instead they come from India.”

It’s the overall tone of the article that bugs me – The Indians taught the Balinese how to make the beads… you’d figure “the Indians” might have called them Indian beads, wouldn’t ya?

More importantly, for me (and I admit, I’m a little funny about stuff like this) the article seems to miss the point somewhat:

It’s true, of course, that Indian culture and religion has played a very large role in the development of this little island culture.

The Hindu religion and culture arrived in Indonesia about 2,000 years ago – probably by Indian traders from Gujerati who were attracted to the islands by their riches in gold, spices, and sandalwood. And why not? That’s exactly the way Islam & Christianity also arrived here… trade.

Indian script has been found in Indonesia dating back to the 5th Century and shows that there were several Indian-style Kingdoms in West Java and Borneo.

Today, you can still see the remains of ancient monasteries and temples in Bali. In these places, the Balinese prices were consecrated into the Indic family tree as god-kings. Balinese script, which many Balinese kids still have to learn, is derived from the Palava script of South India.

Now, I’m no expert on Bali or Balinese history – I’m just reading from other (hopefully more learned sources) but it seems to me that a person saying, “the Indians” taught the Balinese to make beads is kind of like saying the Romans taught Americans how to make bridges and buildings. So, really, the Golden Gate Bridge and the Empire State are Italian but we call it American… maybe they’re Greek.

Let me put it this way: the Balinese have been working stone, wood and metal since the Early Metal and Bronze eras… BC, in other words. Between then and now, they’ve had just about every foreign influence you can point to or shake a stick at: Indian, Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, Japanese, Malay. In other words, just like America, England or Ireland, many foreign feet have left impressions in the sand.

In no way at all does that mean that a Bali bead is really an Indian bead (or vice versa).

For our Bali beads, which are all made in Bali (natch), wood, glass and .925 sterling silver are the most common materials.

Like any handicraft in Bali, the beads are really made by hand… really. There’s no industrial process, no huge factory spitting out beads by the million.

The handicraft industry as I know it has always been a cottage industry.

On one level, that means the beads differ very slightly – it could be a bad thing but I find the concept of a unique article to be charming.

We buy our beads at prices that are a combination of silver weight in grams (material) and workmanship – that means certain items are more expensive just because more work goes into them… I’ve been purchasing in Bali on that system with beads, statues and furnishings for such a long time that it makes total sense to me.

Technorati Tags: beads, bali beads, background on Bali Beads, Silver Bali Beads

Technorati Tags: beads, bali beads, background on Bali Beads, Silver Bali Beads

It’s five in the evening here in Bali and while I might have been out at the beach or walking the dog or drinking a nice glass of wine, instead I’m at home, at the desk, putting beads-bali.com through its paces.

My favorite part of the process was inserting a picture of our (my wife’s and my) new puppy, Jolie, to draw attention to free shipping. Ah, which reminds me: Shipping is now free!!

Please note picture at left.

I can see the ocean from my window — a small crack of it anyway now dominated by a ridiculous wood house.

Having said that, I’ll most likely have some wine later… and why not?

As has been often the case in the past, the problem has not been the content or even getting it all online.

• I use Dreamweaver for the page designs and CSS…. a sometimes completely maddening program and yet worked well enough today.
• Navicat to interface with mysql (an indispensable graphical front end to the unprettiest database on the planet).
• Photoshop for the piccies.

For anyone who’s interested, the site is hosted at Westhost — a seemingly friendly and straight-forward bunch of people… if they prove otherwise, I’ll update this note.

I would have hosted with IQUEST but I’ve had nothing but hassle, problem and errors for the past couple of months and as they haven’t been able to remove their collective heads from their collective butts, I decided to start fresh with this one domain so while I’m spending the money on click advertising with the all might Google and Yahoo — not to mention the ridiculously complicated and low value for money express submit thingie at Yahoo — I didn’t want to do all that without being one hundred percent sure the site was running properly.

All in all, as easy as 1-2-3 — start to finish, the site was up and running in about two hours. Not bad at all.

And then, of course, the real slowdown begins: getting listed in the search engines and putting these products in front of people who’re looking for them.

Why does it have to be so hard?

A sitemap for Google, a sitemap for Yahoo. Pay for this. Pay for that. Logins, passwords, little picture thingies to make sure you’re not a robot… truly, the lunatics are not only on the path; they’re running the asylum.

It actually takes me longer jumping through all these stupid hoops for no damn good reason than it does for me to put up a brand spanking new website/wholesale operation.

Why is it that I can buy a car more quickly than I can get my site listed. And why do they insist on treating us like we’re out to steal military secrets? Makes no sense.

Anyway, just about all I can do now is sit back and try to be patient as I wait for the search engines to come and visit. And, if I’m really, really, really lucky, someone might send me an email.

Sean