About Bali Parasol
Ilse Duijn's story on starting Bali Parasol
Why did I start BaliParasol.com?
The only reason is: Almost 10 years agao I fell in love with this quality and style. My name is Ilse Duijn, I am Dutch and have been living half of the year in Haarlem (The Netherlands) and half of the year in Marbella (Spain) for many years already. On our pool deck we had two high-quality parasols from Bali and I loved them. Normally under the hot weather conditions in Spain, Balinese parasols only last for a maximum of one season. However, my Balinese parasols were lasting for three seasons already and I decided to buy two more. During that time, the shop only offered the color dark grey and the price was raised to €490 per parasol. At that moment I knew that I wanted to make these unique parasols available on a direct selling base for a larger audience and at a lower price.
The search for the highest quality
My search started and eventually I found the parasol makers that could produce this quality. It's a family-run business of proud, traditional umbrella makers from Bali who (as one of the very few) still paint and carve by hand. They do not use stencils and work in the highest quality segment. They are true artisans with heart for their product. Around 90% of what they produce is for Indonesia and a small amount is available for export. This makes these parasols difficult to get in stock in large numbers. I started to design umbrellas, import them and sell them directly without any retail channels to my customers. I also realized; 'this business can never grow big as production is so limited it can never become mass production'. On the other hand this was my advantage as parasol making is an art so competition cannot easily copy (although they try a lot).
We love what we do
As a team we deal with many challenges, such as delays because of local holidays and celebrations, seashells that aren't available due to bad weather conditions, and even erupting volcanoes and tropical diseases resulting in limited production capacity. Many challenges have crossed our path over the years but this does not stop us from doing what we love the most!
Now, 2023 9 years later, I am still on a very happy journey and this week I filed our product to be a registered trade mark.
We are now at the point that the world finds us and we have many returning clients that we want to keep securing our high standard.
Every day still is an adventure...
