Fashionpreneur: Sustaining Traditional Batik Craft Through Entrepreneurship Activity Among Students at Universiti Malaysia Kelantan (UMK)

Abstract

Local craft such as batik is on a regressive trend in Malaysia. Statistic showing the decline of batik makers during the past 10 years is worrying. Most artisans are veterans in the craft business and often have problems passing down their legacy due to the lack of interest among youngsters. The labour-intensive work of batik-making and the competitive market may discourage them from venturing into the batik business. Therefore, the ‘Fashionpreneur’ project was introduced. The word ‘Fashionpreneur’ is a combination of fashion and entrepreneurship disciplines. The project was targeted to combine craft and entrepreneurship, targeting younger generations to venture into local batik business. The project was done during the 2020/21 COVID-19 pandemic, which aimed to stimulate interest in batik among the final-year students at Universiti Malaysia Kelantan (UMK), in the state of Kelantan, Malaysia. The overall project took about 14 weeks to finish, from designing toile until producing the final prototypes. As this project was done during the period of semi-lockdown, half of the semester was done at the Faculty’s premise whilst the remaining weeks were done at a local batik workshop. The project's objective is to track how many students from this project venture into the batik or fashion business after graduating. Previous literature shows that those who had family business in batik have higher chances of venturing into similar business. Prior research also suggested that lack of experience or support from family plus lack in funding were the contributing factors to the setback. A set of survey was given to all eight students involved in the project. Seemingly, the theories regarding batik business are more sustainable when it is run by family with proper funding are justified. After a year of graduating, none of the sampled students ventured into batik or fashion-related business. Even though, the project was unsuccessful in achieving its target to produce younger entrepreneurs in fashion/batik, it has initiated a new strategy to do similar projects in future. Targeting students from batik-related families in future may have a higher chance of producing batik ‘fashionpreneur’. Sustaining the craft must start at an early stage so that the interest and passion in batik can be developed later in the future.