Finding and checking suppliers
When a supplier goes quiet.
A supplier who stops replying is rarely ignoring you deliberately. The usual causes are a holiday, a personnel change, a problem they do not want to report, or a bigger customer. Each needs a different response.
What silence usually means.
A holiday period. Indonesian holidays close businesses for weeks and the dates move each year, and a supplier may not think to tell a foreign buyer.
The person who spoke English left. Small exporters frequently have one person handling foreign customers, and their departure stops everything.
There is a problem they do not want to report. Delay, a failed batch, a raw material shortage. Reporting bad news is culturally harder than many buyers expect.
A bigger customer arrived and your order is now the one that slips.
Rarely, a business in trouble. This is what buyers assume first and it is the least common explanation.
What to do, in order.
Six steps, and the first one resolves most cases at no cost.
- 01
Check the calendar
Before anything else. A national holiday period explains most silences and costs nothing to rule out.
- 02
Change the channel
If email has gone quiet, try messaging. Indonesian business runs on messaging apps far more than on email, and a message frequently gets an instant reply.
- 03
Ask a question that is easy to answer
Not a status update. A specific, small, answerable question restarts a conversation somebody has been avoiding.
- 04
Ask for somebody else
By name if you have one. If your contact left, the company still exists and somebody else can answer.
- 05
Make it easy to deliver bad news
Say explicitly that a delay is workable if you know about it. Buyers who react badly to bad news get less of it, not fewer problems.
- 06
Escalate deliberately
A phone call, then a formal written notice referencing the contract. Do this when you have exhausted the softer routes rather than first.
Preventing it.
Have two contacts at every supplier from the start, and use both occasionally so neither is a stranger.
Agree a check-in rhythm rather than contacting them only when something is wrong.
Ask about holidays at the start of every year and put them in your own calendar.
React calmly the first time somebody tells you about a delay, because that is the moment that decides whether they tell you next time.
Questions buyers ask.
Is silence a sign of fraud?
Rarely, and it is the first thing buyers assume. Holidays, staff changes and unreported problems account for almost all of it, so work through those before escalating.
Should I use WhatsApp?
Indonesian business runs on messaging far more than on email, so yes for speed. Keep anything that matters commercially in email as well, because a chat thread is a poor contract record.
When should I formally escalate?
After the softer routes and before your own deadline makes it impossible to react. A written notice referencing the contract is a step you take deliberately rather than in frustration.
Read next.
Where meaning gets lost
Many disputes start as a specification agreed in a second language. What survives translation and what does not.
Negotiating without breaking the order
Six moves and four traps, about business mechanics rather than national character. What to fix before you discuss price.
When Indonesia stops working
Idul Fitri, Nyepi and Chinese New Year decide whether an order ships on time. How the holiday decree works and why next year's dates are not real yet.
Managing a supplier over years
Quality drifts slowly and nobody announces it. What to measure and when to add a second source.
Sourcing from Indonesia?
Tell us the product, the quantity and the destination. We come back with what it involves before anyone talks about money.