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UNAIR NEWS – UNAIR students have presented other creative and innovative ideas in the field of entrepreneurship. They are Chofifah Ayu Kusumaningtyas, Azka Chusniah Fitrah, and Lidya Ayu Sukmawandira, under the guidance of Diansanto Prayoga, SKM MKes. The three students initiated innovation in the hijab fashion field to improve local tailors’ welfare and introduce the archipelago’s culture.

To UNAIR NEWS, Chofifah, on behalf of her team, described their entrepreneurial innovation journey. The fashion innovation, Ulitha Hijab, has been established since 2020, with the main product: the daily hijab. But in its development, Chofifah and the team want to improve their innovation to be more interesting and have cultural value. Therefore, she proposed a theme: “Nusantara in a Hijab” in their innovation because there is still a lack of local product hijabs with Nusantara motifs.

“We presented Nusantara theme in a piece of hijab because it is still very rare for local hijab printing to use archipelago motifs. Most of them prefer the theme of flora or the beauty of cities in foreign countries. If we want to get to know the archipelago more closely, it will be no less interesting and no less beautiful,” she said.

Until now, the entrepreneurial activity run by FKM UNAIR students has produced more than two thousand hijab products that are marketed to various islands. However, they did not achieve success without obstacles. Building a business in 2020 was certainly a challenge for Ifah and the team due to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in the same year.

Having experienced problems due to the disrupted production and marketing processes, she and her team did not give up. Instead, they performed evaluations and improvements while waiting for the situation to return to normal.

“As beginners, of course, we had quite a bit of difficulty adapting to very new circumstances, so we were forced to stop production for five months. On the sidelines, we continue to evaluate the hijab products we have marketed. Then in August, we restarted the production process by updating the quality of the hijab and expanding the online market,” she said.

Their success in building entrepreneurial innovation does not stop here. In the future, she and her team hope to realize the next development plan and continue to produce innovations in the field of Muslim fashion.

It should be noted that after the funding, Chofifah and her team will carry out various activities, such as monitoring and evaluation, to determine UNAIR representatives in the upcoming KMI Award on November 23-25, 2022​​.

Author: Yulia Rohmawati

Editor: Khefti Al Mawalia