JAKARTA - Last time Asia had an economic crisis, Mark Hanusz was in the middle
of it.
Newly transferred to Jakarta by Swiss Bank Corporation in 1997, Hanusz was part
of a team that helped collapse Indonesia's currency from 2,500 rupiah to one US
dollar on the eve of the crisis to more than 15,000 rupiah per dollar at its
nadir. Indonesia's economy tanked, much of its newly minted middle class was
blasted back into poverty, and, ultimately, its government crumbled.
In the wake of the collapse, Hanusz felt he needed to give something back to
Indonesia. His search for Jerry Maguire-style
redemption began on the fairways of Java, ran through hundreds of packs of
clove cigarettes, and ultimately delivered Hanusz to found Equinox Publishing.
The American from Toledo, Ohio, now runs the largest English-language book
publisher in Indonesia. Equinox's catalogue features more than 60 titles from
contemporary fiction to a Classic Indonesia series reprinting academic
studies dating to the 1950s, many of them unavailable in Indonesia during
President Suharto's 32 years of authoritarian rule.
Equinox was also the first Indonesian publisher to offer the previously banned
works of award-winning author Pramoedya Ananta Toer in his homeland and the
first English translation of sastra wangi (fragrant literature)
trendsetter Ayu Utami's groundbreaking novel Saman. A confessed techie,
Hanusz expanded Equinox into digital downloads and podcasts of Indonesian rock
and roll, plus iPhone applications for Jakartans on the go.
Because publishing uses "silly amounts of paper", Hanusz made Equinox the first
publisher in Indonesia, and one of only a few in Asia, to use only
post-consumer recycled paper for all its books. He's also become an advocate
for reforestation in Indonesia, bringing Nokia in as a partner for NEWtrees, a
corporate tree planting project with the WWF, and recently released My Baby
Tree, an iPhone planting app for individuals.
NEWtrees is just another way for Hanusz to keep turning over new leaves in his
adopted country.
Gary LaMoshi: What did you know about Indonesia before you
arrived in Jakarta in early 1997?
Mark Hanusz: Not much. I made two trips here as a Zurich-based
stockbroker and was familiar with the capital markets, but knew very little
about the culture or people.
GLaM: When I took my first bite of nasi goreng [Indonesian fried
rice], I said, "Wow, this is a country I want to know more about." What was
your "nasi goreng moment"?
Hanusz: The Jakarta branch tried to recruit me in January 1997
but before I confirmed I requested a quick (and clandestine) trip to come visit
the office for a few days. I had to keep it secret from my superiors in Zurich
as I was sure they wouldn't approve the move. Some members of the Jakarta
office took me out to some nightclubs in Kota the evening I arrived and within
an hour - after feeling the incredible energy and masses of people - I realized
Jakarta was the place to be.
GLaM: You arrived in Jakarta during the final days of the Suharto
boom. What was striking about that time? Were there signs that the boom was
about to go bust?
MH: I arrived at a time when the market seemed to be growing
exponentially (indeed, due to the interest from clients, the local office
needed a new salesman on the desk). Everyone seemed to be flush with cash and
the currency and politics were very stable. There were no signs that anything
was amiss.
GLaM: Tell me about your role in driving down the rupiah during
the 1997 the Asian economic crisis? What was the mindset of foreign bankers at
that time?
MH: The perpetual growth we assumed was based on a stable
currency. As long as the rupiah (or baht, or peso or ringgit) was stable, the
US dollar debt that companies and countries had was serviceable. Once these
currencies weakened, suddenly the cost of servicing US dollar debt increased,
and in the rupiah's case, increased by five or six times. The sudden
depreciation of currencies led to extraordinary volatility in the currency
markets, and traders love volatility. The currency markets were very thinly
traded as well, so it didn't take much capital to knock it 5% a day - which is
what my bank's FX desk in Singapore (with others) was able to do. I was on the
equity side and wasn't involved in Singapore's FX decisions, but I was in the
morning conference calls and was fully aware of what they were doing.
GLaM: After you left the bank, you decided to see Java, play golf
and write a book about kretek [clove] cigarettes. That doesn't seem like
the behavior of a man burdened by many regrets at that point.
MH: I was offered a transfer to Singapore, which I declined. I
had been in the bank for seven years and was burnt out. I wanted to stay in
Indonesia and try to understand what was going on outside of Jakarta. So many
colleagues of mine has left Indonesia without seeing any part of Indonesia
outside of Jakarta and Bali - and I didn't want the same thing to happen to me.
At that time - fall 1998 - the self-esteem of the Indonesian nation was really,
really low. The currency was in the toilet, the May 1998 riots were fresh in
everyone's mind, there was a new president, there were massive fires in Sumatra
and Kalimantan, which caused smoke to blanket Singapore and KL.
Everything that could have gone wrong seemed to, and I thought it was my duty
to come up with something that Indonesia was good at - as I convinced myself I
did have some role in the country's demise. The problem is I didn't know what
it was or how to find it.
The answer came when a friend gave me a golf map of Java and I decided golf
courses would be my rest stops as I made a month-long tour of Java by car.
Along the way I began to collect packs of kretek cigarettes as souvenirs
of my journey and after two weeks I had close to 800. Somewhere between Malang
and Yogyakarta I got the idea to write a book about this incredible homegrown
phenomenon. I was very fortunate that I was able to fund the project myself so
set up a publishing company to do so.
GLaM: What's different between what you're striving for at
Equinox and run-of-the-mill corporate social responsibility?
MH: One of the great things about having zero publishing
experience is that you are able to try out new things all the time - sort of a
"throw it against the wall and see what sticks" mentality. I was never shackled
with old-school beliefs or ideas or training so while I appear to be
unconventional, the reality is I don't really know what the convention is.
GLaM: Did the idea of redemption lead you to publishing or did
you find ways to make publishing redeeming? What's behind the name Equinox for
the firm?
MH: I wrote and published Kretek as I felt I owed the
country something. I pestered the great writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer enough
times and managed to get him to write the book's foreword. After Kretek came
out, I felt a responsibility and deep gratitude to him that I wanted to make
his books available - they were banned at the time. So the first three books I
published after my own were books written by him.
The name Equinox comes from several themes: I worked in equities, and I arrived
in Indonesia on March 21, 1997 (the vernal equinox). Coincidentally, my last
day at the bank was September 21, 1998 (the autumnal equinox). The company got
its licenses on September 21, 1998 and the first book was published on March
21, 2000. So the vernal and autumnal equinoxes are quite auspicious for me.
GLaM: Equinox also publishes its Classic Indonesia series
of academic works about Indonesia. What can we learn about Indonesia today from
works written four or five decades ago?
MH: Remember the old saying, "Those who forget history are doomed
to repeat it"? Well it might come to people as a surprise but Indonesia has a
long and rich history, and there is a lot we can learn from it. Issues such as
foreign relations, nationalism, regional autonomy, et cetera, are not new
debates in Indonesia. They have been around for hundreds of years. But one
problem has been getting access to books that covered these issues as they are
all long out of print. By republishing these texts - in an innovative way, I
might add - we have removed one of the problems. Getting people to read and
learn from them is another problem I am working on at the moment.
GLaM: You're also taking steps to make your business greener.
Tell me about them and how it's part of giving something back to Indonesia?
MH: About a year ago we decided to use recycled paper for our
books. As a publisher, I use silly amounts of paper and figured out a way to
use it without raising my prices. I figured if I could do that then it might
set an example for other companies to embrace recycled paper as well. I am also
involved in the WWF program NEWtrees, which plants trees in Kalimantan and
Lombok.
GLaM: Tell me more about your involvement with the NewTrees
project. How did you decide to get involved with that particular project?
MH: The idea came to me when I started using recycled paper for
books. I made a deal with a local importer to import a container of paper from
Denmark and in order to fill it the mill suggested we try some of their A4
recycled photocopy paper. I checked with some colleagues and found there was
indeed interest, but they wanted it to be carbon-neutral so we devised an
offset with WWF [World Wide Fund for Nature] to plant four trees per 160 reams
(one pallet) [of paper]. After some thought, I came up with a system to geocode
the trees with precise latitude and longitude coordinates and used a Nokia N95
phone (with integrated GPS) to do this. My contact at WWF Indonesia, Nazir
Foead, met up with Nokia Asia's Environmental Head, Francis Cheong, and
explained what we were doing with their phones. Francis was so excited he
committed Nokia to plant 100,000 trees and be a founding member of the program.
"NEW" in NEWtrees stands for Nokia, Equinox Publishing, and WWF. WWF already
had a planting program in Kalimantan and since my wife was from there I thought
it would be the perfect place to start the planting. Since then we have
expanded it to include a protected forest on the slopes of Mount Rinjani,
Lombok.
GLaM: WWF says you've been an ambassador for the project,
promoting it to bring in other companies. Who've been your biggest gets?
MH: We have many corporate clients - local and international -
like Toyota, Indosat, Garuda, Suryapalace Jaya and Coca-cola.
GLaM: I also know you're involved with iPhone applications. What
does Nokia have to say about that?
MH: They are thrilled, actually, and want me to work with them to
develop apps for the Symbian platform as well.
GLaM: Seriously, how do phone applications fit into your other
interests? Of all the adjectives associated with the iPhone, I don't believe
I've heard it called redeeming. The iPhone doesn't seem to be particularly
suited to Indonesia, since it's expensive and wasn't even officially available
until well after you began marketing applications.
MH: It is a logical progression of my businesses actually.
Publishing books here required me to figure out how to get them available
around the world, like through Amazon.com, and then I expanded this to music
through iTunes, and when Apple called for developers for iPhone it just seemed
to make sense to get into this business as well. I love the concept of a Flat
Earth - being able to develop something here, be it books or music or apps, and
have hyper-efficient global distribution. That's why we are also converting all
of our titles to Amazon's Kindle eBook format. Once we submit a title to
Amazon, it is available for download all over the world in two hours, something
that's obviously impossible with hard copies.
GLaM: At what point do you think your debt to Indonesia will be
repaid?
MH: I think it was repaid with the publication of Kretek,
actually, but I still continue to get much joy living and working here. In some
small way I'd like to think the country appreciates what I do as well.
Longtime editor of investor rights advocate eRaider.com, Gary LaMoshihas
written for Slate and Salon.com, and works as an adviser to Writing Camp (www.writingcamp.net).
He first visited Indonesia in 1994 and has tracked its progress ever since.
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