The slogan is “Always santai!”

About Marapulai

Marapulai is a clothing brand founded 2011 in Hamburg, Germany. Marapulai clothing is beginning as a small family company. The designer and owner is Muhammad Ilham Nirwan, supported by his wife Saskia. Marapulai is the first clothing brand of the Company Marapulai Clothing and combines ethnic motives of the Indonesian culture with casual style. The design concept continues with the Indonesian map on the sole and the ethnic logo on the back of the shoes.

And the slogan ´Always santai!`, which means ´always relaxed!`, is typical for Indonesian people and an attitude towards life. Marapulai products are for stylish and extroverted people and set fashion trends.

All products are made with carefulness and very good quality. We look for very good workmanship of the product and very good material. The idea Marapulai is born in Germany and the products are made in Indonesia. The planned products are handmade shoes from real leather, especially sneakers, and later clothes and bags. The first we have almost finished now are shoes.

Meaning of Marapulai

"Marapulai" is a word of the language from the culture of the Minangkabau ethnic group of West-Sumatra in Indonesia. In the past it was the word for ceremonial clothing of kings and chiefs. Later it changed to the meaning of sublime clothing for traditional ceremonies, like official big events for people from different regions of Sumatra. Nowadays, the concept has gained in usage as a word for the wedding outfit of the groom. We want to combine abstractly all the meanings in Marapulai, because it contains the ethnic side of culture, the quality of clothes and the young side of modernity.

About the owner and designer of Marapulai

Muhammad Ilham Nirwan

Since his childhood in Bukittinggi (island Sumatra) in Indonesia, his life was connected to art and creativity, like making his toys out of bamboo and wood. So he started to make his dream come true. While his study of Product Design (B.A.) at Institut Teknologi Bandung in Indonesia he successfully created the Shirt brand “Padeh”. But he decided to move further and went to the foreign country Germany for studying Digital Media (M.Sc.) at University Bremerhaven.

Marapulai – our idea and our target

We, as beginning entrepreneurs, want to support other start-ups and company enlargements. That´s why we didn´t want to produce in a big fabric. Therefore, our partners in Indonesia are business start-ups with a small business, like a home industry. Some are not bigger than two by three meters, but even so the quality is excellent and they work very well. So our target is also the social aspect of being an entrepreneur and the responsibility. Our target is that the shoe producer, the seller and the user is happy.

We make sure to comply with the guidelines of the social responsibility concept for companies in our manufacturing process. This means compliance with social standards in low-wage countries, paying fair and living wages, no child labor and sustainable production. And we agree with campaigns like "Clean Clothes". Of course we think on the environment, too. That is why the shoe boxes are made of cardboard.

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Thank you

The start in 2011 - Finding a brand name

We started to implement the idea of ​​an own clothing brand in January 2011. In this year Marapulai is born and we hope it will grow in future.

Ilham designed the logo and the first drafts of the first pair of shoes. The logo should include subjects from Indonesia, such as flowers, animals, and ethnic-style pattern. 

And we were looking for a suitable brand name. That was one of the most difficult initial hurdles, because we have to find a name that does not yet exist and not registered. That is really a challenge.

We also here wanted a reference to Indonesia, so we rolled the dictionary and wrote down all the fine-sounding words with a beautiful meaning. As there were several possible names and shoe designs, we started a little research. We asked friends and acquaintances at every opportunity, what they like best and why. 

So we came, for example at the beginning to the brand name Kemayu. But after the research in the Innovation and Patent Centre in the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce, we had to discard it. There was already registered the name kemajo, and because of confusion with this other name, it would not be good to take a similar name.

I now found also another link for the marks research direcly on the website of the Patent center. Just search the name here on Register search.

The search continued. Our second idea of a brand name was Marapulai and it was free and none brand that sounds like it. We were lucky. So our new clothing brand has a name: Marapulai Clothing! You can have a look at our Facebook Fanpage Marapulai Clothing.

Ilham went on to the revision of the drafts of the logo
and the shoes and I did the research of the conditions for registration of the mark, something like international Classification for the Registration of Marks (Nice-Classes) and the corresponding list of the products.

And while this, we want to find seed money for starting the business in reality, because to the theoretical planning is good and important, but you truly want to start in some time. So we begin to write a business plan.